Dawn H. Thomas

Dawn H. Thomas is an associate director and research analyst on CNA’s Safety and Security team. She brings extensive experience with state, local, regional, and federal entities in preparing for and responding to catastrophic events. She participated in federal and regional planning initiatives, resulting in concepts of operations that will govern response to large-scale, man-made, and natural events. She has written, executed, and evaluated more than 20 exercises in the fields of animal disease, public health, medical operations, and responding to acts of terror, providing analytic support to the U.S. Navy (USN), Health and Human Services (HHS), the Department of Homeland Security, and the University of Michigan. For the National Exercise Program (NEP), Thomas led the on-site incident command evaluation of the 2007 Top Officials 4 (T4) exercise and supported the evaluation of several Principal Level Exercises for HHS. She has contributed to the analyses of real world operations, including evaluations of the USN response to Hurricane Katrina, HHS response to Hurricane Rita and disease outbreaks, an after action review of District operations in support of the 2009 Inauguration, and preparations for several National Security Special Events (NSSE). She has also worked with state and local emergency management, public health, and agriculture agencies in Delaware, Kansas, Louisiana, Maryland, Minnesota, Mississippi, Nebraska, Texas, and Wisconsin as well as the USDA and the USN. Thomas supported the 13-county Houston-Galveston region as they executed their regional catastrophic preparedness grant program. She recently completed her work as evaluation lead for the 2011 DHS/FEMA National Level Exercise (NLE) and now works as the project manager of the FEMA National Exercise Division Evaluation Service Line.

Prior to joining CNA, Thomas conducted research in counterterrorism at Hebrew University of Jerusalem. There, Thomas had the privilege of working with Professor Ehud Sprinzak, researching the timely subject of terror campaigns and their comparison to individual acts of terror. Before that, she served as the liaison for terrorism legislation for the American Jewish Congress, where she researched and tracked Congressional debate and action on counterterrorism issues.

Education

• M.A. Israeli Politics and Society, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 2000
• B.S. Political Science, Carnegie Mellon University, 1994

Selected Publications and Reports

• “National Level Exercise 2011 After Action Report.” September 2011 (with Ravishankar, A, Byrne, L., Tidman, S, Dake, J, and Thorkildsen, Z.).
• “National Level Exercise 2011 Supplemental Analysis Document.” September 2011 (with Ravishankar, A, Byrne, L., Tidman, S, Dake, J, and Thorkildsen, Z.).
• “Using Real-World Events to Inform Capability-Based Planning: A reconstruction of Hurricane Ike and the Oklahoma City bombing.” November 2009. (With De Groot, A, and Dake, J.).
• “Regional Planning Gaps: A synthesis of planning gap data to support RCPT discussion and prioritization.” October 2009.
• “Regional Capability Prioritization: A synthesis of capability data to support RCPT decision-makers.” September 2009.
• “Case Study Review of Translational Scientific Successes.” November 2008.
• “Hurricane Season 2006: Updating the Delivery of HHS and ESF-8 Support,” June 2007.