Welcome from the Editors: Pracademic Affairs, 6th Edition

Meghan McPherson is the System Director of Emergency Management Education, Training, and Exercises for the Mount Sinai Health System in New York City. In this role, Meghan leads the development, planning, and execution of a robust training and exercise program across the health system. McPherson is a seasoned emergency manager with over two decades of experience in the field. Most recently, she served as the Director of Emergency Management for Mount Sinai Queens Hospital on the front lines of the response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Prior to joining the Mount Sinai Health System, Meghan was Assistant Director of the Center for Health Innovation (CHI) at Adelphi University, where she served as the program coordinator and faculty for emergency management graduate programs. She concentrated her work on community-based social resilience initiatives. Preceding her work at Adelphi, Meghan spent four years as both the Grants Manager and the Energy Assurance Program Manager in the Governor’s Office of Energy and Planning in New Hampshire. While in this position, she supported the State Emergency Operations Center during disasters by ensuring the continuity of the state’s energy supply. She also worked for James Lee Witt Associates in Washington, D.C. and deployed multiple times to Louisiana to support recovery efforts following Hurricane Katrina. Meghan serves on the University of Southern California Emergency Management program faculty, where she also participated in both curriculum and course development and serves on the Bovard College Faculty Council. She previously wrote the curriculum for the MPS in Emergency Management and served as adjunct faculty at Tulane University’s Emergency and Security Studies graduate programs. Meghan is a Certified Emergency Manager (CEM), Certified National Healthcare Disaster Professional (NHDP-BC), and Certified Healthcare Provider Continuity Professional (CHPCP). She is a member of the Naval Postgraduate School Center for Homeland Defense and Security Executive Leaders Program Cohort 2102 and was honored in 2011 as one of New Hampshire’s Top 40 under 40. She was named the recipient of the 2023 David McIntyre Homeland Security Educator Award and the 2025 USC Bovard College Faculty Excellence in Student Mentoring Award. Meghan earned her BA in political science at the University of New Hampshire and her Master of Public Policy (MPP) with a concentration in national security policy from The George Washington University.

Michael Wallace, Ed.D., is the Director of the Emergency and Security Studies program and a senior professor of practice at Tulane University. He’s a retired military intelligence officer with 20 years of active service, with military assignments including Naval Special Warfare, Defense Human Intelligence, the Defense Intelligence Agency, and the Office of Naval Intelligence. Post-military, he worked as a senior intelligence analyst in the Joint Chiefs of Staff Intelligence Directorate. Dr. Wallace has experience in counterterrorism, counter-proliferation, special warfare, and intelligence collection and analysis. He is a graduate of the Virginia Military Institute, holds an MLA from Tulane University, an MMAS in Military History from the US Army Command and General Staff College, and a Doctorate in Education from the University of Alabama. Dr. Wallace is also an adjunct professor at the Naval War College.