Heather Roiter

Heather Roiter is the Assistant Commissioner of Risk Reduction and Recovery at NYC Emergency Management. Since joining in 2007, Heather has led the development and execution of various plans and tools related to emergency management, evacuation, and risk reduction. This ongoing effort has given her technical expertise in assessing NYC’s risks from hazards and leading the City’s coordination for over $250M in FEMA hazard mitigation grants. Her other initiatives include the Interim Flood Protection Measures Program to deploy temporary flood protection at 55+ sites and launching the country’s first web-based Hazard Mitigation Plan for a local jurisdiction in 2019. This year, she served as the EOC Manager for NYC’s COVID-19 response and oversaw the NYCEM COVID-19 Hotel Program that managed 35k reservations to support isolation and quarantine of individuals at risk of exposure. She holds a B.S. in Demography from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and an M.S. in Urban Planning from Columbia University.