Our Team

Alyssa D. Scala-Halstead has extensive background and experience been working in Emergency Management. She's provides consultation services nationwide from the largest cities in the country to the smallest rural communities. She has received accolades from past and present clients regarding her ability to apply jurisdictional capability and capacity to create federally-compliant Emergency Operations Plans (EOP), while ensuring local relevance.

Emergency Management - New Jersey

Ms. Scala-Halstead began her emergency management career in the public health arena shortly after the Anthrax attacks of October 2001. One of her initial accomplishments was developing the first Public Health Risk Communication Plan and Mass Immunization Plan for Union County, NJ. In doing this, she actively worked with fire and police departments to understand the need to incorporate public health into their planning efforts to support building more comprehensive response plans. Working with senior fire department officials, Ms. Scala-Halstead developed a training program for firefighters that included information on the medical consequences to exposure for all WMD incidents. This work was bundled with information on public health response plans and the work being done to provide countermeasures to first responders and their families. She trained more than 600 firefighters in less than a year.

Emergency Management - New York City

After her success in New Jersey, Ms. Scala-Halstead accepted a position with the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. She worked with NYC hospitals in effort to support the development of training and exercise programs across the city and successfully implemented a training program, which included a Master Trainer Curriculum. She was then recruited, within the department to serve as the Exercise Coordinator, establishing and implementing the first-ever Comprehensive Exercise Program for the department. In 2007, she successfully designed, conducted and evaluated 22 exercises in one year. These included both discussion and operations-based exercises that yielded significant results in a short period of time for NYC DOHMH.

Emergency Management - National

In 2008, Ms. Scala-Halstead started her own consulting company and immediately was recruited across the country to assist with multiple projects, including: the State of Hawaii Regional Catastrophic Planning Program, East/West Gateway COG (Missouri) for Mass Fatality, State of Mississippi on their H1N1 After Action Report, and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts Medical Surge Plan. She has a vast background in planning, training and exercises for large scale catastrophic incidents, including mass care management; surge capacity; triage treatment and transport; Mass Prophylaxis; Pandemic Planning; Mass Fatality Planning; hazard mitigation; comprehensive emergency management; and Special Needs Planning. Ms. Scala-Halstead has also completed a variety of projects in the private sector to assist with building depth in their Business Continuity Plans.

Education/Certifications

Ms. Scala-Halstead received her Master's Degree in Health Education and Medical Studies from Montclair State University and is a certified Master Exercise Practitioner and is NIMS and HSEEP Train the Trainer certified.

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