Emergency management in the United States is facing a skills and knowledge gap. According to a 2025 study by Deloitte and the National Emergency Management Association (NEMA), emergency management professionals saw an increase in types and frequency of disasters — including industrial accidents and natural hazards — between 2020 and 2025. Only 25 percent of emergency management directors said their staff had the necessary skills to manage all these emergency situations.
A career in emergency management focuses on keeping people safe and healthy. However, it requires technical knowledge in areas such as risk assessment and mitigation, as well as soft skills like communication — all part of the curriculum in a Master of Science in Disaster Resilience Leadership (MS-DRL) program.
What Is Emergency Management?
Emergency management is a broad career field covering the roles involved in preparing for, protecting against, and recovering from natural disasters and other public emergencies.
Key goals of emergency management include assessing potential risks, developing frameworks and implementation plans to mitigate those risks, providing the public with the resources to prepare for potential emergencies, and putting into motion recovery plans should a disaster strike.
Emergency Management Cycle
Emergency management or disaster management isn’t a one-and-done situation. When we think of emergency management, we often think of the step where people receive aid when a disaster strikes. However, there were already many parts in motion before that step could happen. The emergency management cycle consists of five steps:
- Mitigation: During the mitigation phase, the focus is on finding methods to reduce the loss of life and property and overall lessening the impact of potential disasters.
- Preparedness: In the preparedness stage, emergency management professionals work to arm the public with knowledge about future disasters and tools and resources should the disaster strike.
- Response: The response phase begins immediately after a disaster, in which the goal is to move quickly to save lives, protect the environment, and ensure that communities have their immediate basic needs met.
- Recovery: The recovery stage is much longer than the response stage and sees emergency management professionals work with communities to rebuild infrastructure and restore community functioning through health, social, environmental, and cultural services.
- Resilience: The resilience stage sees emergency management professionals work with communities to ensure that they’re ready for the next disaster, working on improving upon the previous stages of the cycle for the next disaster.
Emergency Management Tenets
According to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), emergency management should be:
- Comprehensive: Disaster preparedness should take into account all potential risks, as well as where and how hazards will affect different communities.
- Progressive: Emergency management requires studying past disasters and future trends to develop progressive, impactful plans.
- Risk-driven: Using risk management principles such as risk analysis and hazard identification, those preparing to help communities face disaster must have the ability to identify priorities.
- Integrated: Preparation and recovery plans must be well integrated into communities to ensure that everyone at risk has the resources they need when they need them.
- Collaborative: Because emergency management affects everyone at risk from a potential threat, all professionals involved in protecting these communities, including local officials and community groups, must work together toward common goals.
- Coordinated: Disaster recovery and preparation consists of many moving parts, as one risk can have many different effects, which is why emergency management professionals should be coordinated multitaskers.
- Flexible: Because disasters can have different effects depending on their location and other factors, emergency management professionals must be innovative and adaptable.
- Professional: Disaster preparedness, recovery, and resilience require a scientific approach, as well as education and training in responding to emergencies.
It’s important to remember that emergency management never exists in a vacuum. Agencies like FEMA prioritize the Whole Community approach to emergency management. When whole communities work together, they reduce knowledge silos, which can be dangerous in the face of a disaster. What people don’t know when a disaster strikes can become a hazard to their ability to protect themselves.
Even within one community, different families and cultural groups may have very different experiences. Understanding their unique needs and perspectives can help emergency management professionals create more realistic, actionable plans.
It’s also worth considering the importance of human connection in the face of a disaster. When people lose a sense of safety and stability in their environment, they seek social support. Ensuring that communities can stay socially connected helps them rebuild.
5 Emergency Management Careers
Emergency management involves different facets of protecting the public from disasters, including disaster recovery and disaster resilience.
Because protecting communities from emergencies requires coordinated efforts, careers in the field have various responsibilities and skill requirements, though they share the common goal of mitigating the effects of disasters before, during, and after they occur.
Emergency Management Director
Emergency management directors play a key role in crisis leadership. Before an event occurs, directors are in charge of developing response plans and frameworks. When a disaster strikes, they lead the response, putting their plans into action. They lead from command centers, delegating tasks and overseeing staff as they implement the emergency management framework.
Responsibilities of emergency management directors include:
- Assessing risks and potential hazards through creating hazard profiles and composite loss maps
- Preparing response plans to mitigate potential risks, training others on disaster preparedness, allocating resources when emergencies occur, and restoring infrastructure
- Collaborating with public safety officials, community groups, and government agencies to develop emergency response plans
- Hiring, organizing, and training emergency response workers
- Allocating resources to communities in response to emergencies
- Appealing to state and federal governments for emergency funding
Salary and Career Outlook
The median annual salary for emergency management directors was $86,130 as of 2024, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). The BLS projects that openings will increase by 3 percent between 2024 and 2034, on par with the national average.
Public Information Officer
Although public information officers work in various government agencies, community groups, and nonprofits, they play a particularly important role in emergency management planning and recovery.
Public information officers working in emergency management ensure that communities have the crucial information they need to keep safe. This role requires a blend of public relations and management experience.
Responsibilities of public information officers include:
- Organizing public awareness campaigns
- Issuing alerts and warnings to the public on impending disasters
- Mitigating the effects of misinformation and correcting rumors
- Monitoring media reports and connecting with media outlets
- Verifying all information before release to the public
- Gathering key information about disaster and response plans
Salary and Career Outlook
The median annual salary for public information officers was about $70,000 as of April 2026, according to Payscale.
The BLS classifies public information officers as a type of public relations specialist and projects 5 percent job growth for the role between 2024 and 2034, slightly faster than the average for all professions.
Environmental Health and Safety Officer
Environmental health and safety (EHS) officers ensure that organizations comply with occupational and environmental health and safety regulations and address potential environmental health risks. They work in both preventive and response capacities, and their policies and plans help mitigate the impacts of disasters.
When emergencies occur, EHS officers may work in response and recovery management, helping implement disaster recovery plans. They may also specialize in ensuring that communities receive vital resources, such as clean drinking water, during disasters.
Responsibilities of EHS officers include:
- Assessing risks and their potential impacts
- Developing frameworks to address risks in different organizations, facilities, and communities
- Ensuring that emergency management plans comply with all laws, rules, and regulations
- Training others on how to implement emergency management frameworks
- Implementing disaster recovery plans
- Allocating resources during and after disasters
Salary and Career Outlook
EHS officers earned a median annual salary of about $89,000 as of April 2026, according to Payscale.
The BLS classifies EHS officers as occupational health and safety specialists and technicians and projects 4 percent job growth for the role between 2024 and 2034.
Disaster Recovery Manager
A disaster recovery manager designs and implements plans to ensure the safe recovery of communities after an emergency. These managers draft in-depth plans and lead implementation initiatives, ensuring that communities are educated on how to respond to a disaster and can move quickly to get themselves to a safe, stable place.
Disaster recovery managers work on different types of disasters and must have unique skills and knowledge about how to respond to various disasters. In the face of a natural disaster, for example, the focus will likely be upon protecting life and property, ensuring that people have their basic needs met when infrastructure fails. However, disaster recovery managers may also specialize in recovery from cyberattacks, where the focus is less on the protection of life and more on the protection of sensitive data and systems.
Responsibilities of a disaster recovery manager include:
- Creating in-depth plans for various types of disasters
- Leading implementation initiatives in the response phase
- Hiring and training response team members
- Educating their team and the public on response plans
- Ensuring that communities have their basic needs met immediately after a disaster strikes
- Analyzing response plans' success and weaknesses to better prepare for the next disaster
Salary and Career Outlook
The BLS tracks disaster recovery managers as types of social and community service managers. According to the BLS, the median annual salary for social and community service managers is about $78,240 as of 2024. Between 2024 and 2034, the number of open roles for social and community service managers is expected to increase by 6 percent.
Safety Directors
A safety director works with different organizations to oversee the general health and safety procedures within that organization. They play an important role in ensuring that employee health and safety is prioritized and that the organization has response plans in place when a disaster arises. In addition to developing safety plans and procedures, they also are responsible for training employees on these plans.
Safety directors work with a variety of different organizations and may specialize in different areas depending on the organization. For instance, a safety director working in a factory will need knowledge of industry compliance in manufacturing and how to mitigate safety risks in such settings.
Responsibilities of a safety director include:
- Developing health and safety plans for an organization
- Assessing workplaces for health and safety risks
- Mitigating risks through in-depth safety frameworks
- Educating employees on disaster preparedness and response
- Becoming an expert in industry compliance for their organization’s industry
- Monitoring response plan implementation
Salary and Career Outlook
O*NET OnLine, which is sponsored by the U.S. Department of Labor, tracks safety directors as a type of business operations specialist. Business operations specialists have a median annual salary of $83,050 as of 2025 and a 3-to-4-percent projected growth rate between 2024 and 2034.
Develop Your Emergency Management Skills With Tulane University
Emergency management careers require both technical skills, such as risk analysis and mitigation, and soft skills, such as collaboration and flexibility. As natural disasters become more common and severe, many communities face a difficult future.
Tulane’s Master of Science in Disaster Resilience Leadership (MS-DRL) was designed around FEMA’s National Disaster Recovery Framework (NDRF), ensuring that students learn the knowledge and skills they need to address today’s emergencies. Through a flexible program with an interdisciplinary, evidence-based curriculum, students learn to become leaders in emergency management, protecting communities and ensuring that they’re on the path to recovery faster after disasters.
Start your career in emergency management with Tulane.
Recommended Readings
How You Can Build Social Work Skills for Leaders in a DSW
MSW Concentrations: Specializing Your Practice
Sources:
Federal Emergency Management Agency, Emergency Management
Federal Emergency Management Agency, Functions of the Public Information Officer
Federal Emergency Management Agency, Lesson 3. Assessing Risks
Federal Emergency Management Agency, National Preparedness Goal
Indeed, 12 Careers to Consider in Emergency Management
O*NET OnLine, Business Operations Specialists, All Other
Payscale, Average Environmental Health & Safety (EHS) Officer Salary
Payscale, Average Public Information Officer Salary
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Emergency Management Directors
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Health and Safety Specialists and Technicians
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Public Relations Specialists
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Social and Community Service Managers