North Bay NEXT 2023 - Confirmed Speaker
Jennifer Gray Thompson
Jennifer Gray Thompson is the CEO of After the Fire USA. Jennifer graduated from Dominican University and was an educator before earning a MPA from University of Southern California’s Price School of Public Policy. Post-graduate school, she worked in local government. After the devastating fires in the North Bay of San Francisco in October 2017, she became Executive Director of Rebuild NorthBay Foundation (RNBF), a nonprofit dedicated to help the region rebuild better, greener, safer, and faster. In 2021, RNBF created After the Fire USA in response to the Era of Megafires, a relatively recent chronic climate-based disaster.
As the nation’s leading expert in community recovery from wildfire, Jennifer works at the federal level to improve the space of wildfire disasters by collaborating with the public, private, and nonprofit sectors to raise awareness, educate policymakers, and empower local communities.
Jennifer is committed to equitable and resilient recoveries for every community, and shortening the space between wildfire communities and policy makers. ATF USA provides compassionate, effective, and relevant consulting services to wildfire communities to support locally lead and designed recoveries. ATF USA "Before the Fire" program is the lead agency for nearly $10M in state and federal grants for wildlands fuel mitigation programs.
Jennifer Gray Thompson is a nationally recognized SME and has presented at several national conferences, including US Chamber of Commerce Foundation, HAC, Fannie Mae, Brownsfield, Smart Cities, FEMA, and more. She is cofounder of CANVAS, an association of disaster professionals who “listen locally, act regionally, reform nationally.” She also hosts the “How to Disaster” podcast, which highlights innovative leaders in the space of disaster. She serves volunteer boards for La Luz Center, a nonprofit serving primarily Latinos, and First Responders Resiliency, Inc, a nonprofit dedicated to eradicating PTSD for First Responders. In 2022, Gray Thompson was named as one of Forbes 50 over 50 IMPACT List.