Ms. Tonya D. Coultas serves as the Assistant Vice President (AVP) for Safety, Security & Emergency Management for Georgetown University. As the AVP, she provides overall leadership and expert oversight for the development of policies and strategies across the areas of emergency management, crisis and disaster preparedness, response and recovery, resiliency, and business operational continuity.

 

Ms. Coultas has over 30 years of combined federal executive, local, state, military, and international experience transforming national level programs providing authoritative executive level guidance in support of national and international-level security, defense, intelligence, safety, disaster response, and crisis management.

 

Ms. Coultas served as a Senior Executive for DHS National Protections Programs Directorate (NPPD), Office of Infrastructure Protection, where she led the Department’s private and public sector engagement efforts forging reciprocal partnerships between government and the private sector to increase information sharing, promote security, and build resiliency. Ms. Coultas executed the critical infrastructure cross sector community long-range goals and strategies to assess security, safety and resilience vulnerabilities identifying dependencies, interdependencies, and unanticipated cascading effects during and following incidents to improve risk-informed policy decision-making.

 

Prior to joining DHS/NPPD, Ms. Coultas served as a Senior Executive for FEMA. There she led the development for non-disaster grants representing over $20 billion annually in federal assistance. This encompassed the Homeland Security Grant (HSGP) portfolio to include the Transit and Port Security grants, Urban Areas Security Initiative (UASI) grant, Emergency Management Preparedness Grant (EMPG), and the suite of Assistance to Fire Fighter Grants (AFG). She worked collaboratively with Congress, the White House, State, and local elected officials to develop national strategies to improve alignment with emerging global security threats and risks.  Prior to joining FEMA, Ms. Coultas also served as the Executive Director for the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) at the U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT).

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Ms. Coultas is a retired Chief Master Sergeant from the Maryland Air National Guard where she served for twenty-four years.  During her service she participated in Operation Desert Shield/Storm and Operation Noble Eagle.  She has served with Headquarters United States European Command, the Joint Chiefs of Staff J-4, and the National Security Agency.