The Hon. Richard Serino is Special Advisor to The Edward Davis Company. Serino spent more than forty years in public service. During that time he provided extensive leadership on emergency management, emergency medical, and homeland security at local, state, federal and international levels. Serino was appointed by President Obama and confirmed by the Senate as the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s 8th Deputy Administrator in October 2009 and served until 2014. In this role, Serino also served as the Chief Operating Officer (COO) of the agency with more than $25 billion budget. Prior to his appointment as Deputy Administrator, he spent 36 years at Boston EMS where he rose through the ranks to become Chief. He also served as the Assistant Director of the Boston Public Health Commission.
Serino responded to over 60 national disasters while at FEMA and during Super Storm Sandy, he was the lead federal area commander for New York and New Jersey. Serino was also on scene at the Boston Marathon bombings as the Department of Homeland Security senior official. Serino has also responded to a number of other federally declared disasters around the country.
Serino is currently a Distinguished Senior Fellow at Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health, National Preparedness Leadership Initiative and a Senior Advisor at MIT’s Urban Risk Lab. Serino attended Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government Senior Executives in State and Local Government program in 2000, completed the Kennedy School’s National Preparedness Leadership Initiative in 2005, and graduated the Executive Leadership Program, Center for Homeland Defense and Security at the Naval Postgraduate School.