Hosting Amazing Speakers in Humanitarian Logistics and Healthcare

Today is the first class meeting for my course, Humanitarian Logistics and Healthcare, a course that I taught last year at the Isenberg School. I have also taught an intense version of this course at the Vienna University of Economics and Business in Austria and have been invited to offer it there again.

Logistics is one of my passions and Humanitarian Logistics is a subject that is not only extremely timely but also very challenging from multiple perspectives. Hence, it is a topic that is interdisciplinary and is continuing to evolve.

An important, and much appreciated part of the course, by both students (and me), is the experts that I bring in to speak to the class. We all come prepared with many questions and benefit greatly from the speakers' expertise on the front lines.

This year, in the month of February alone, we will be hosting:

• Ms. Deborah Wilson, a registered nurse, who worked on the
  frontlines of the Ebola crisis in Liberia with Doctors Without Borders.
• Mr. Jeff Hescock, Director of University Emergency Management
  and Business Continuity at UMass Amherst.
• Mr. Brian Rust, Manager of Security Services and Emergency
  Preparedness Coordinator at Cooley Dickinson Hospital.
• Ms. Kim Goulette, Executive Director of the Pioneer Valley Chapter of the American Red Cross.

We are so grateful and appreciative to all the above experts for the time that they take out of their very busy schedules to come to the Isenberg School to share their experiences and lessons learnes with us!

I am looking forward to a very exciting class and a great semester!