COMMISSIONERS

Dr. Michael Anderson, University Hospitals

Appointed to the Commission by President George W. Bush, Dr. Anderson is the Interim Senior Vice President and Chief Medical Officer at University Hospitals. As a pediatric specialist, Dr. Anderson has been active at the local, state and national level in pediatric disaster readiness and response. Currently he is pooling the talent of Ohio’s six children’s hospitals to form a disaster response team to serve as a state and federal asset in the wake of future disasters. His research and clinical interests include national physician workforce, pediatric critical care transport and national health policy issues for children.

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Merry Carlson, Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Management, State of Alaska

Appointed to the Commission by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, Ms. Carlson is the Preparedness Chief for the Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Management for the State of Alaska, where she helps provide critical services to the State to protect lives and property from terrorism and other hazards, as well as to provide rapid recovery from disasters. Ms. Carlson has served as Alaska’s Suicide Prevention Council Coordinator, and as Deputy Director for Behavioral Health for the North Slope Borough Health Department in Barrow, Alaska, where she both provided direct service and administered agencies in the areas of mental health, substance abuse, fetal alcohol, children and youth, developmental disabilities and infant learning.

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Hon. Sheila Leslie, M.A., Nevada General Assembly; 2nd Judicial District Court

Appointed to the Commission by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Ms. Leslie is a Member of the Nevada General Assembly and the Specialty Courts Coordinator for the 2nd Judicial District Court, running the criminal, family and juvenile drug courts and the state’s first mental health court. Ms. Leslie has worked on behalf of Nevada children, youth, and families for over 25 years. She served as Executive Director of the Children’s Cabinet, where she created innovative, award-winning programs including Family Preservation, the Child Care Resource Council, Homeless Youth Advocacy, Parent Education Network, and Nevada’s first comprehensive Adolescent Health Care program. She was also founding director of the Food Bank of Northern Nevada. As owner of a small consulting business, Ms. Leslie provided comprehensive consulting services through contracts with public and private non-profit human service organizations, specializing in developing and implementing public/private partnerships addressing the needs of children and their families.

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Bruce Lockwood, Bristol-Burlington Health District

Appointed to the Commission by Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Mr. Lockwood is the Public Health Emergency Response Coordinator for the Bristol-Burlington Health District. Mr. Lockwood has 28 years experience in emergency management, emergency medical services and public safety, with extensive planning at the local, regional and state levels for children’s needs in disaster situations. He served as the Canton Schools All Hazard Planning Chair, and as a member of the Governor’s Prevention Partnership School Safety Portal Committee and the Child Safety and Crisis Response, State of Connecticut, Daycare and Child Care Subcommittee; he also served on the Connecticut Public Health Emergency Preparedness Advisory Committee.

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Graydon "Gregg" Lord, Office of Homeland Security, George Washington University Medical Center

Appointed to the Commission by President Bush, Chief Lord is Associate Director of the National EMS Preparedness Initiative and Senior Policy Analyst at the Office of Homeland Security at George Washington University Medical Center. His career in Public Safety spans over 25 years and encompasses roles in rural and urban jurisdictions. He became a paramedic in the early 1980’s, subsequently achieving promotion to EMS Operations Chief of the second largest EMS system in New England at Worcester Emergency Medical Services. Chief Lord lectures nationally and internationally on EMS systems management, leadership and operations. He is an adjunct faculty member for various institutions and agencies, including Institute for International Disaster Emergency Medicine, Texas A&M University, U.S. Department of Justice and the Copenhagen Fire Department. Prior to his role at George Washington University Medical Center, Chief Lord served as Division Chief of Emergency Medical Services for Cherokee County Fire Department in Cherokee County, Georgia.

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Dr. Irwin Redlener, National Center for Disaster Preparedness, Columbia University
The Children’s Health Fund

Appointed to the Commission by Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Dr. Redlener is President and co-founder of The Children’s Health Fund; he is also Director of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health.  Dr. Redlener worked extensively in the Gulf region following hurricane Katrina where he helped establish ongoing medical and public health programs.  He also organized medical response teams in the immediate aftermath of the World Trade Center attacks in 2001 and has national and international disaster management leadership experience.  Dr. Redlener served as Director of Grants and Medical Director of USA for Africa and Hands Across America; he also developed one of the country’s largest health care programs for homeless children and their families, the nationally acclaimed New York Children’s Health Project, now a model for several health care projects in The Children’s Health Fund’s network of programs.   

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Dr. David Schonfeld, National Center for School Crisis and Bereavement, Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center

Appointed to the Commission by House Minority Leader John Boehner, Dr. Schonfeld, FAAP is a developmental-behavioral pediatrician and the Thelma and Jack Rubinstein Professor of Pediatrics, Director of the Division of Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrics, and Director of the National Center for School Crisis and Bereavement at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center; he is Professor Adjunct of Pediatrics at Yale University School of Medicine. Dr. Schonfeld is a member of the Disaster Mental Health Subcommittee of the National Biodefense Science Board Federal Advisory Committee and the American Academy of Pediatrics Disaster Preparedness Advisory Council; he is a Past President of the Society for Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrics. For over two decades, he has provided consultation and training on school crisis and pediatric bereavement in the aftermath of a number of school crises (e.g., school shootings) and disasters within the United States and abroad, including flooding from Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans and Hurricane Ike in Galveston and the 2008 earthquake in Sichuan, China. He coordinated the training of school crisis teams for New York City Public Schools after 9/11. Dr. Schonfeld is actively engaged in school-based research involving children’s understanding of an adjustment to serious illness and death and school-based interventions to promote adjustment and risk prevention.

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Mark K. Shriver, Save the Children

Appointed to the Commission by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Mr. Shriver is Vice President and Managing Director for U.S. Programs at Save the Children. Before joining Save the Children, Mr. Shriver served as a Member of the Maryland House of Delegates. Among his many leadership roles as an elected official, he served as Maryland’s first-ever Chair of the Joint Committee on Children, Youth and Families, where he spearheaded an early childhood education initiative resulting in over 37 million new dollars for early education. Before being elected, Mr. Shriver created and was Executive Director of the innovative Choice Program, a public/private partnership serving at-risk youth through intensive, community-based counseling and job training services; The Choice Program has expanded to include The Choice Jobs Program and The Choice Middle School Program, and has been replicated nationwide. Mr. Shriver served on the Board of Directors of the Maryland Special Olympics and of the Montgomery County Court Appointed Special Advocates. He was a member of the Governor’s Juvenile Justice Advisory Council and the Governor’s Task Force on Alternative Sanctions to Incarceration.

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Lawrence Tan, New Castle County Department of Public Safety

Appointed to the Commission by House Minority Leader John Boehner, Mr. Tan is Chief of Emergency Medical Services at the New Castle County Department of Public Safety. He started his career as a volunteer firefighter/EMT during high school, and has served as a paramedic, EMS Lieutenant, Emergency Services Assistant Manager, Assistant Chief and Deputy Chief. Mr. Tan’s assignments have included commander of both the Administrative and Operations components of the service, in addition to a special Homeland Operations detail within the Office of the County Executive. Mr. Tan was a member of the National Faculty for the Counter Narcotics and Terrorism Operations Medical Support Program conducted by the Department of Defense Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, Department of Homeland Security Federal Protective Service and United States Park Police. He also serves on the Federal inter-agency Board for Equipment Standardization and Interoperability as a member of the Medical subgroup, and serves on the executive committee of the FEMA Region III Regional Advisory Council.

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