Joshua L. Kelly, CEM, is a Planning Supervisor, the Long-term Recovery Program Manager, a CFR107 certified drone pilot, and an EMAC A-Team Member for the Delaware Emergency Management Agency (DEMA). He currently supervises a staff of four in the Natural Hazards Section of DEMA, which is responsible for coordinating recovery planning activities, the administration of the State’s Public Assistance program, the Pre-Disaster Mitigation (PDM) grant program, the Flood Management Assistance (FMA) grant program, and the Hazard Mitigation Grant Program (HMGP). In addition to his role as a supervisor, he is also a Certified Emergency Manager from the International Association of Emergency Managers (IAEM) and serves as the Planning Section Chief during State Emergency Operations Center (EOC) activations. Mr. Kelly has worked on six federally declared major disasters, including mutual aid deployments to Puerto Rico following Hurricane Maria and Florida following Hurricane Irma and the State of Delaware’s response to the global COVID-19 incident.

Previously, at DEMA, he oversaw the administration of the Homeland Security Grant Program (HSGP), Non-profit Security Grant Program (NSGP), DEMA’s Continuity of Operations Plan, the State Threat Hazard Identification and Risk Assessment (THIRA), and was the State Public Assistance Officer. Prior to his time with the State of Delaware, Joshua worked as a Senior Emergency Management Specialist for the City of Garland, Texas, and a Research Assistant at both the Disaster Research Center and the University of North Texas. As a Research Assistant, he worked on four National Science Foundation funded projects and was a co-author on seven disaster-related publications – including a book chapter and several academic journal and magazine articles. He received a B.A. from the University of Delaware where he majored in Sociology and Criminal Justice and his M.P.A., with a concentration in Emergency Management, from the University of North Texas.​

Gary Kreps is a retired Vice Provost and Professor of Sociology at the College of William and Mary. Following completion of his PhD in Sociology (1971) at the Ohio State University, he began his career as a faculty member (1972-to retirement) and administrator (1994-to retirement) at William and Mary. During his long career Kreps had long-standing research interests in organizational and role theories as both relate to structural analyses of community, regional, and societal responses to natural, technological, and willful hazards and disasters. Following work as a staff office and consultant at the National Research Council during the late 1970s, for over twenty years Kreps' archival studies of disaster events were supported by grants from the National Science Foundation. Over the course of these two decades, Kreps and his colleagues and students developed taxonomies and theories of organizing and role enactment during the emergency periods of disasters. Major findings from Kreps' research program were reported in two books and articles in Sociological Theory, Annual Review of Sociology, American Sociological Review, American Journal of Sociology, International Journal of Mass Emergencies and Disasters, and many other basic and applied publications. Kreps also collaborated with Thomas Drabek on resolving venerable issues in the definition of disasters as physical and sociological events. His 2001 entry in the International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences (Disaster, Sociology of) emphasized the need to reconcile functionalist and constructivist conceptions of disasters as acute systemic events. In 2008, Kreps received the E.L. Quarantelli award for contributions to social science disaster theory.