The Office of Emergency Communications (OEC) has a new Regional Coordinator (RC), John MacLean.  John will represent Region IV (FL, MS, AL, GA, SC, NC, TN and KY).  The OEC now has an RC for each of the 10 FEMA Regions. The OEC RCs serve as OEC’s Regional representative and work closely with federal, state, local, and tribal stakeholders to help improve emergency communications operability and interoperability.

“John will join our highly skilled team of RCs on February 14, 2011,” said Chris Essid, director of the Office of Emergency Communications in the announcement. “Prior to joining OEC, John worked for the City of Philadelphia for 15 years, holding several positions relating to local emergency response activities.  He served as the Deputy Director for the Managing Director’s Office of Emergency Management in charge of IT and emergency communications.  He also served as the Emergency Operations Center (EOC) Manager and Field Emergency First Responder Team Leader where he took part in over 50 activations and was involved in public safety planning and execution during many special events.  Additionally, in Philadelphia he served as the Vice Chairman of the Interoperable Communications Committee of the Southeastern Pennsylvania Regional Task Force where he was a project manager for several region-wide projects to develop a regional interoperable communications system.

“Most recently, John served as the FEMA Regional Emergency Communications Coordinator (RECC) for Region III and recently moved to Region IV to support the Region IV RECC.  As the Region III RECC, John was the project manager for the Disaster Emergency Communications program and was deployed as part of several field teams.  In addition to all of this experience, John has worked for over 20 years in the field of Technology with a background in electronics, radio communications, and IT systems.  John is also a Commissioned Officer in the US Naval Reserve as an Information Professional Officer.”