REAL Exclusive Magazine

New College Of Florida Selects Luis Suarez As Director Of Emergency Management.

Suarez brings a wealth of knowledge and experience from Manatee County, where he served as an emergency management officer. In that position, he wrote and established the standard operating procedures for the county’s Emergency Operations Center. He also was responsible for planning and conducting two full-scale hurricane simulations, which hosted, trained, and evaluated over 200 county and municipal personnel. Additionally, he was responsible for coordinating the requests and arrival of resources being utilized to deal with the aftermath of Hurricane Irma in September 2017.

Before joining Manatee County, Suarez served 20 years in the United States Marine Corps, and in 2016 he retired from the Pentagon as a Chief Warrant Officer 3. During his military career he executed multiple deployments, including expeditionary operations in Far East Asia, search and rescue operations for Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, and two combat tours in Iraq.

During his tour in the Pentagon, Suarez was assigned under the Office of Emergency Management, where he created and published standard operating procedures. As a program manager and emergency management analyst, he was responsible for planning and coordinating special event monitoring operations, overseeing the safety of thousands of people, to include dignitaries and the President of the United States.

At New College, Suarez will focus on planning, directing, and monitoring all activities relative to the College’s all-hazard disaster planning, preparedness, response, mitigation and recovery programs, including maintaining currency of the College’s Emergency Operations Plan and Continuity of Operations Plan. He also will lead the design and administration of emergency and disaster preparedness training courses that instruct campus stakeholders on how to effectively respond to major emergencies and disasters.