| Speakers |
| Sheri Belafsky MD, MS, FACOEM Director, Medical Surveillance Program COEH, University of California, Davis Dr. Belafsky is a board-certified occupational and environmental medicine physician and has worked with the UC Davis Medical Surveillance Program since 2009. She completed residency training in Occupational and Environmental Medicine and a Master of Science degree in Public Health Science and Policy at UC Irvine, and received her M.D. from Tulane University School of Medicine. As the UC Davis Medical Surveillance Program’s medical director, she works with employers to identify potential workplace health hazards and design medical programs to help protect the health of workers. Dr. Belafsky currently serves on the board of directors for the Western Occupational and Environmental Medical Association (WOEMA), and is active in planning educational content for both WOEMA and UC Davis medical providers. She is passionate about fitness and enjoys hiking, yoga, and running. | |
| Michelle Beltran Director, Continuing Education Program Center for Occupational and Environmental Health Michelle Meyer is Director of Continuing Education at the Center for Occupational and Environmental Health (COEH). She began her health and safety career when she joined COEH in 2017 after working at multiple tech start-ups in the San Francisco Bay Area. Michelle graduated from the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry in 2013. | |
| Nestor Castillo MPH Program Coordinator Labor Occupational Health Program (LOHP), University of California, Berkeley Néstor Castillo is a Program Coordinator who received his MPH from UC Berkeley. Nestor's work focuses on worker health and safety in immigrant communities and he leads the NIEHS Hazardous Waste and Disaster Preparedness Training Program at LOHP. Before joining LOHP, Nestor was a university lecturer teaching courses related to Latina/o Health in the California State University System. | |
| Louise Comfort PhD Project Scientist; Professor Emerita Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of California, Berkeley Louise K. Comfort is Professor Emerita and former Director, Center for Disaster Management, Graduate School of Public and International Affairs, University of Pittsburgh. She is also an affiliated researcher with the Policy Lab, Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society, University of California, Berkeley and Concurrent Professor, School of Government, Nanjing University, Nanjing, China, 2019. Her recent book, The Dynamics of Risk: Changing Technologies and Collective Action in Seismic Events, Princeton University Press, 2019, received the 2020 Don K. Price Award for Best Book from the Section on Science, Technology, and Environmental Politics, American Political Science Association. She led an international, interdisciplinary group in a comparative study of 12 nations’ response to COVID-19, that produced a co-edited book, L.K. Comfort and M.L. Rhodes, Global Risk Management: The Role of Collective Action in Response to COVID-19, Routledge Publications, September, 2022. She studies the dynamics of decision making in response to urgent events: earthquakes, tsunamis, hurricanes, wildfire, and COVID-19. | |
| Angel Desai MD, MPH Associate Clinical Professor University of California, Davis Dr. Angel Desai is an infectious diseases physician and Associate Professor at the University of California, Davis. Her research focuses on leveraging novel data sources to discern epidemiological trends in emerging diseases and outbreaks, particularly among displaced and other vulnerable populations. Her other interests include global infection prevention and control measures in resource-limited settings, and health communication. | |
| Jessica Early MSN, RN, FNP-C Patient Advocacy Organizing Coordinator National Union of Healthcare Workers (NUHW) Jessica Early, MSN, RN, FNP-C, is the Patient Advocacy Coordinator at the National Union of Healthcare Workers where she has worked since 2020 to organize patients and provide occupational health and safety support to NUHW members. Prior to joining NUHW, Jessica lived in Vermont where she worked as a Senate staffer for Senator Bernie Sanders. Jessica is a graduate of the Yale University School of Nursing and has worked as a registered nurse and nurse practitioner in a variety of inpatient and outpatient settings. | |
| Jason Ferguson MPH Director of Emergency Management University of California, Berkeley Jason Ferguson is the Director of Emergency Management at UC Berkeley and brings 20 years experience in a variety of roles in emergency preparedness, response, and management. He has extensive experience in higher education, a background in training and stakeholder engagement, and is committed to leveraging emergency management best practices to harness institutional strengths. Jason is a graduate of Benedictine University in Illinois and holds his MS In Public Health from Benedictine. He also holds numerous emergency management certifications including Incident Command System Instructor, Homeland Security Exercise and Evaluation, FEMA Professional Development, and more. Jason is an active member of the International Association of Emergency Managers (IAEM) where he now serves as Vice Chair for its Universities and Colleges Caucus (UCC). | |
| Tenaya Lafore EdD Coordinator of Public Programs Labor Occupational Health Program (LOHP), University of California, Berkeley Tenaya has over two decades of experience in adult education, including work in unions and workers centers as a labor organizer and educator, at City College of San Francisco as an ESL teacher, and teaching social justice classes with incarcerated women. Through this work she has developed a passion for creating educational programs that build on the knowledge that participants bring, and that support working people’s collective agency to have more agency in determining their working conditions and lives. Bay Area organizations she has worked with include the San Francisco Day Labor Project, Young Workers United, HERE Local 2, UAW 2865, and the Choices drug recovery program in the San Mateo County Jail. Tenaya has an MA in Education from UC Berkeley and a doctorate in Education from the University of San Francisco, focusing on the role of popular education in community and labor organizing. | |
| Thomas Maiorana MFA Assistant Professor Department of Design, University of California, Davis Tom Maiorana is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Design at UC Davis where he focuses on product design, design thinking, and prototyping. Assistant Professor Maiorana is among the interdisciplinary, multicampus researchers from the University of California partnering with agencies and community organizations in the Bay Area to help residents respond to natural disasters more quickly — and more safely. He is also a Fellow at the John Muir Institute and regularly teaches at Stanford University’s d.school. Tom has an MFA in Design from Stanford University and a Bachelor of the Arts from Vassar College. | |
| Erica Pan MD, MPH State Epidemiologist; Deputy Director of the Center for Infectious Diseases California Department of Public Health Erica Pan, MD, MPH, FAAP, FIDSA, the Deputy Director of the Center for Infectious Diseases and State Epidemiologist, was sworn in July 13, 2020. She was the Acting State Public Health Officer from August 10, 2020 to January 3, 2021. Prior to joining CDPH, Pan served as the Alameda County Health Officer since July 2018, and the Director of the Division of Communicable Disease Control and Prevention, and Deputy Health Officer at the Alameda County Public Health Department since 2011. Pan served in several positions, at the San Francisco Department of Public Health (SFDPH) from 2004 - 2011, including Director of the Public Health Emergency Preparedness and Response Section, Deputy Health Officer, and Director of the Bioterrorism and Infectious Disease Emergencies Unit in the Communicable Disease Control and Prevention Section. She is also a Clinical Professor in the Department of Pediatrics, Division of Pediatric Infectious Diseases at the University of California, San Francisco. She maintained her clinical work at San Francisco General Hospital and at UCSF Benioff Children's Hospitals in San Francisco and Oakland in Infectious Diseases until 2019. Her previous training includes completion of a Pediatric residency, chief residency, and Pediatric Infectious Disease, and Traineeship in AIDS Prevention Studies Fellowships at the University of California, San Francisco. She also completed a Medical Epidemiologist Trainee year at the SFDPH. She is board certified in both Pediatric Infectious Diseases and Pediatrics. She received her MD and MPH degrees from Tufts University School of Medicine, and completed her undergraduate education at Stanford University. | |
| Suresh Raman MyShake Lead Seismology Lab, University of California, Berkeley Suresh Raman is lead for the MyShake team at Berkeley Seismology Lab (BSL). Suresh is a software development professional and worked for many companies, most notably as a Director of the Search Engineering organization at eBay. Suresh joined BSL in August of 2023 and has helped improve MyShake during his short tenure. Suresh is active in outreach, giving presentation on earthquakes, early warning and MyShake to numerous forums, thereby helping the public become more knowledgeable and more prepared for earthquakes. | |
| Joshua G Smith MS Section Chief, Homeland Security Division San Francisco Fire Department Joshua Smith currently serves as a Section Chief in the Homeland Security Division of the San Francisco Fire Department. In his current role he works with federal, state, city, and private partners to plan for, and manage, major special events and disasters in the City and County of San Francisco. He has worked for the fire department as a paramedic supervisor responding to high acuity medical calls and mass casualty incidents. He was an undergraduate from UC Berkeley and received his masters in Management of Emergency, Security, and Crisis from the Universidad de Rey Juan Carlos in Madrid. | |
| Gina Solomon MD, MPH Chief of the Division of Occupational, Environmental & Climate Medicine University of California, San Francisco Gina Solomon is the Chief of the Division of Occupational, Environmental & Climate Medicine at the University of California San Francisco (UCSF). At UCSF, Dr. Solomon oversees clinical occupational health activities at three hospital sites, leads research efforts in environmental health, and directs the Occupational and Environmental Medicine (OEM) residency program. From 2018-2023 Dr. Solomon was a program director at the Public Health Institute (PHI) in Oakland, CA, where she established and led the Achieving Resilient Communities (ARC) project to identify, test, and expand actionable interventions to reduce climate change impacts in farmworker communities. From 2012-2018, Dr. Solomon served as the Deputy Secretary for Science and Health at the California Environmental Protection Agency. She was a senior scientist at the Natural Resources Defense Council from 1996-2012. Dr. Solomon has served on multiple boards and committees of the National Academies of Sciences; World Health Organization; U.S. Environmental Protection Agency; Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; Bay Area Air Quality Management District, and other federal and state agencies. Dr. Solomon received her bachelor’s degree from Brown University, her M.D. from Yale, and did her M.P.H. and her residency and fellowship training in internal medicine and occupational and environmental medicine at Harvard. | |
| Mark Stainer Associate Safety Engineer Cal/OSHA, Consultation Unit Mark Stainer has worked in the field of occupational safety for 25 years. Currently, he is an Associate Safety Engineer for the Cal/OSHA Consultation Unit in Oakland. Mark graduated from Sonoma State University with a B.A. in English Communications. Mark's experience includes 11 years in the insurance and workers' compensation industry and he has spent the last 15 years working with Cal/OSHA Consultation Services. The Cal/OSHA Consultation Unit works with a wide variety of businesses across all industries, helping them to develop and maintain effective safety and health programs, procedures, and systems. | |
| Scott Summerfield Principal SAE Communications Scott is a principal of SAE Communications. SAE has provided communications counsel, media relations, and Joint Information Center management for many of California's most challenging recent crises, including the 2023 winter storms, 2020 Coronavirus response, 2019 Conception dive boat tragedy, 2018 Montecito mudslide, 2017 Thomas fire, 2016 Sherpa fire, 2015 Refugio Beach oil spill, 2014 Isla Vista shootings, 2011 Seal Beach massacre, and numerous crises of confidence.Scott is a Dean of Instruction at the California Specialized Training Institute (CSTI), past president and lifetime member of the California Association of Public Information Officials (CAPIO), CAPIO Paul Clark Award winner in recognition of outstanding service, grants chair of the Bay Area Sports Hall of Fame, past executive board member of the City-County Communications and Marketing Association (3CMA), past board member of the Bay Area Cable Excellence Awards, and guest lecturer at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School of Communication. Scott is a graduate of the Telecommunications and Film program at San Diego State University and is a member of its Alumni Association Board of Advisors. | |
| John Swartzberg MD, FACP Clinical Professor Emeritus School of Public Health, University of California, Berkeley John Swartzberg, MD, is a clinical professor emeritus at UC Berkeley’s School of Public Health, chairs the editorial board of the School of Public Health’s Health & Wellness Publications. He is a past director of the UC Berkeley–UCSF Joint Medical Program. He is past-President of UC Berkeley’s Emeriti Association. Swartzberg is board-certified in internal medicine and infectious diseases. Before joining UC Berkeley’s faculty part-time since 1980 and full-time since 2001, he spent 30 years in clinical practice. He is also the hospital epidemiologist and chair of the infection control committee at the Alta Bates Medical Center in Berkeley. | |
| Jane Thomason CIH Lead Industrial Hygienist National Nurses United/California Nurses Association Jane Thomason is a Certified Industrial Hygienist and the Health and Safety Coordinator with National Nurses United, the largest labor union and professional association for registered nurses in the United States. In her role, Jane oversees the Health and Safety literature and policy review and teaches continuing education classes for NNU’s 225,000 RN members. Jane has developed expertise and conducts research on a wide range of issues faced by nurses, including workplace violence, ergonomics and patient handling, infectious diseases, and other hazardous exposures. | |
