Nicole Meyer-Morse

PhD, Microbiology

Response Division Director (acting); Mitigation Deputy Division Director, FEMA

she/her

Nicole Meyer-Morse, PhD – Speaker Bio

Current position: Response Division Director (acting); Mitigation Deputy Division Director, Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA)

Previous positions: AAAS Fellow Department of Defense, Chemical and Biological Defense; CCST Fellow California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services; Science and Technology Advisor, California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services; Deputy Division Director, Public Assistance, FEMA; Climate Advisor (acting), FEMA; Policy and Doctrine Branch Chief (acting) Interagency Coordination Division, FEMA.

Current position description: I spent over a decade at the bench, studying cancer at UCSF, then immunology and infectious disease through my PhD at UC Berkeley, before a AAAS Science and Technology Policy Fellowship at the Department of Defense changed my trajectory entirely. That fellowship took me to the Pentagon, where I advised senior military leadership on biodefense strategy, and opened a unique door into federal science policy, specifically at the intersection of emerging and neglected diseases that the WHO, CDC, and DOD were concerned with. From there I moved into emergency management, spending 15 years at the intersection of science, policy, and high-stakes crisis response – including senior roles at the California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services and now FEMA, where I serve as a senior leader directing the federal government’s disaster response across six states and 29 Tribal Nations. In practice, that means when a wildfire, flood, earthquake, or act of terrorism overwhelms a state’s capacity to respond, my team deploys federal resources – search and rescue, logistics, and incident management – to fill the gap.

Advice for trainees: Your PhD is not a narrow credential – it’s a way of thinking that is genuinely rare and genuinely needed far outside of academia. The skills you are building right now – reading and synthesizing complex evidence, designing unbiased experiments, communicating technical ideas to skeptical audiences – are exactly what federal agencies, policy offices, and research institutions desperately need. The most important thing I did was saying “yes” to a non-traditional path – a AAAS Fellowship that took me somewhere completely outside of my comfort zone. My advice is to follow the doors that open, especially ones that surprise you – and know that all of those years at the bench are an asset, not a detour.