Mario E. Gomez

Senior Associate, Global Communications

Mario is a dedicated and passionate corporate public relations professional with more than 20 years of experience as Director of Corporate Communications, media spokesperson, crisis communications specialist, media relations strategist, and social media producer. Mario has held management/leadership positions with a global disaster organization, the United Way of Houston, and the Cenikor Foundation.

Mario has created and implemented international communications campaigns and secured national and international media coverage. He has successfully booked interviews with ABC News, NBC Nightly News, CNN, CNN International, London Times, commercial aviation trade publications in Europe and the Middle East. Mario has also positioned corporate staff as subject matter experts and booked national and international interviews related to the recovery efforts of Air France Flight 447, US Air Flight 1549 and crisis management challenges for the government of Japan after the earthquake and tsunami.

During his tenure with The United Way of Houston, Mario was a member of the Executive Management team. He analyzed the potential impact of a critical situation involving the 2001 Enron financial crisis (a major United Way corporate donor) and questionable donations to the organization. He implemented a crisis communications plan and managed a “feeding frenzy” of potentially negative national news coverage and minimized the impact to The United Way. Result: no negative news coverage with The United Ways’ involvement during the Enron crisis.

Mario‘s previous experience includes positions as a television news and radio reporter in the southeast United States. He has received awards from the Public Relations Society of America, Texas Public Relations Association, a Suncoast Television Emmy nominee, and he is FEMA Certified National Incident Management System Public Information Officer (IS-0072.a) and a member of the Public Information Officer (PIO) Network Houston/Galveston Region.

Insights

/* Custom Archives Functions Go Below this line */ /* Custom Archives Functions Go Above this line */

Blakely Webster

Marketing

Blakely Webster has over 15 years of business operations experience. She has spent the past 10 years in operations management overseeing analytics, HR coordination, bookkeeping and accounting. She has always taken great pride in looking after the wellbeing of her team and has taken numerous courses in family assistance training over the past 13 years.

Throughout her roles in business, she has excelled in the creative aspects of presentation and training design, template creation, social media management, web design, and music creation and video editing. She participates in a weekly podcast promoting women’s golf, with accompanying social media to support it. Blakely obtained a degree in Business Administration (General Management) from Mount Royal University in Calgary, Alberta in 2015 and a Business Administration diploma with a focus in Entrepreneurship from SAIT Polytechnic in 2013. She is a community volunteer, having been a mentor for Big Brothers and Big Sisters for three years, and assisted in the response to major flooding in Calgary in 2013. She was also instrumental in assisting Spirit Airlines during their evacuation response to the 2017/2018 hurricane season

 

/* Custom Archives Functions Go Below this line */ /* Custom Archives Functions Go Above this line */

Bob Palestrant

SVP Response, Americas

Location: Americas

Bob Palestrant has over 40 years of experience serving as a registered nurse, firefighter/paramedic, emergency manager, and in the discipline of homeland security. He is a Certified Emergency Manager (CEM) through the International Association of Emergency Managers (IAEM), a credentialed Chief Fire Officer (CFO) through the Center of Public Safety Excellence and earned his master’s degree in Homeland Security from American Military University.

He was the Director of the Office of Emergency Management and Homeland Security for Miami-Dade County, Florida, coordinating multi-agency and multi-jurisdictional responses to disasters and large-scale emergencies, and as a member of a coalition of Emergency Managers from the 11 largest U.S. cities, worked with the Council of Excellence in Government to standardize and improve methods of increasing the preparedness and the ability of cities to respond to disasters on a national basis.

Bob has been instrumental in multiple activations including several major hurricanes, Superbowls XLI and XLIV, multiple mass casualty incidents, aviation disasters and mass shootings. As a member of the Florida Task Force 1 Urban Search and Rescue Team, he was on several deployments including the World Trade Center attack on 9/11.

As the Southeast Florida Fusion Center Terrorism Liaison Officer Program Coordinator, he served on multiple regional, state, and national homeland security-related committees and work groups. He is certified as an Incident Command System (ICS), instructor, and Office for Bombing Prevention (OBP) Bomb Making Materials Awareness Program (BMAP) Administrator/Trainer. He has received multiple service awards and honors, and in 2021, was selected as the Government Technology & Services Coalition-Homeland Security Today’s State Homeland Security Person of the Year.

Bob was a technical consultant for the show “Without Warning,” broadcast on both The Discovery and The Learning Channels and has been a panel member or given presentations on emergency management, aircraft rescue and firefighting, and homeland security issues at multiple conferences and symposiums across the country and internationally.

/* Custom Archives Functions Go Below this line */ /* Custom Archives Functions Go Above this line */

Barbara Webster

Executive VP

Barbara Webster is Executive Vice President at GoCrisis, overseeing North America, Central and South America, and the Caribbean. Barbara is a renowned Crisis, Family Assistance, and Business Continuity expert. She was most recently the Senior Director of Emergency Response and Business Continuity at Spirit Airlines for nine years before joining GoCrisis. She has over 30 years of experience in the field of emergency management, which began in the oil & gas sector in Canada. Prior to her career at Spirit Airlines in Florida, she successfully developed and led WestJet Airlines’ Emergency Response and Family Assistance programs for nine years in Calgary, Alberta, Canada.

She has extensive domestic and international response experience which includes a fatal hotel explosion in Playa del Carmen Mexico and aviation accidents in Tripoli, Libya and Dillingham, Alaska. She has also responded to numerous aircraft-related incidents, a tall ship sinking off the coast of Brazil with high school students, three mass shootings, and multiple hurricanes requiring full facility evacuations. Barbara also led Spirit’s partnership with Operation Puerto Rico Care-Lift, where she coordinated over 160 tons of relief supplies to Puerto Rico during the 2017/18 Hurricane Season.

Barbara is a citizen of both the United States and Canada, and is currently based out of Fort Lauderdale, Florida. She is one of the Founding Board Members and former Chair of AERO, the Aviation Emergency Response Organization, and has provided guidance to air carriers and airports around the world.

Insights

/* Custom Archives Functions Go Below this line */ /* Custom Archives Functions Go Above this line */