Notes on Resilience 153: Truth In The Eye Of The Storm, with Samantha Montano
Crisis leadership is about recognizing reality faster than everyone else. And telling the truth when it’s hardest.
We sit down with Samantha Montano—associate professor of emergency management and author of Disasterology—to unpack what actually works when the stakes are life and death. From Katrina’s painful lessons to the East Palestine train derailment and the long haul of COVID, she traces a thread through delayed recognition, top-down blind spots, and the corrosive impact of mistrust.
Samantha breaks down the habits that separate effective responders from well-meaning bystanders: identify a crisis quickly, listen to the people closest to the ground, decide with clarity, and stay flexible as facts change.
We also talk about what we owe survivors after the cameras leave: rigorous after-action reviews that identify what failed—codes, policies, infrastructure—and commit to real fixes. Samantha shares practical ways to navigate the misinformation by pre-identifying credible experts and transparent sources before a crisis hits. There’s hope here too: a new wave of students stepping into emergency management with clear eyes about climate risk and a drive to build systems worthy of public trust.
If you care about disaster response, public communication, or leading under pressure, this conversation offers concrete frameworks and hard-won wisdom.
Dr. Samantha Montano is an associate professor of emergency management at Massachusetts Maritime Academy, co-founder of Disaster Researchers for Justice and the Center for Climate Adaptation Research, and the author of Disasterology: Dispatches from The Frontlines of The Climate Crisis.
BlueSky: https://bsky.app/profile/samlmontano.bsky.social
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Producer / Editor: Neel Panji
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