Get to know: Tiffani Bowser

Tiffani Bowser has been the emergency training and exercise coordinator in the Office of Emergency Management since March 2019. Learn more about her and why she loves her job at the University.

How would you best describe your role as an emergency training and exercise coordinator, and what does your typical workday look like?
My role is to plan and coordinate emergency training, drills and exercises. Pre-pandemic, a typical day would consist of working on various projects such as the Multi-Year Training and Exercise plan, a document that strategically outlines training activities for students, staff and faculty; and improving, implementing and promoting the Campus Emergency Preparedness program, NinerReady, which encourages individual accountability and preparation for emergency situations. Additionally, I would work with various entities across campus to streamline emergency training for their specific areas. During the pandemic, most of the training and exercise activities were paused and my office focused on COVID operations, such as coordinating cases from the Niner Health Check Survey and processing vaccination records and mitigation tests. One of my major responsibilities was processing COVID cases in the registry and monitoring them from start to finish.

What is the most challenging part of your job? Most rewarding?
One of the most challenging aspects of the position is to relay the importance of emergency training to our campus community. My job is to demonstrate how relevant these training sessions are to various entities. The variation certainly keeps me on my toes! The most rewarding aspect of my job is when there is a noticeable recognition of the importance of emergency training. When individual entities start reaching out to me for training, I know that my outreach efforts have been successful, and that feeling is so rewarding.

What’s your most memorable experience as an employee?
The most memorable experience I have to date is being able to observe the Niner Nation community coming together as a family after the April 30, 2019, event. Working in the Emergency Operations Center, I was able to see firsthand how people and departments came together to help each other heal and become stronger. I had a bird’s-eye view of the improvement of processes and the hard work that went into making sure that happened. It was a pretty amazing thing to witness.

What drew you to the field of emergency management?
While working with my previous employer as a safety coordinator, I was frequently tasked with emergency management duties in addition to environmental health and safety responsibilities. I helped to implement strong emergency management policies and procedures during my tenure and came to realize how important it was to have a specialized focus on emergency management. It became a passion of mine to assist institutions of higher education with further developing their emergency training.

What/Who inspires you in your career?
My coworkers inspire me to feel excited about emergency management and to keep improving on what I know or think I know each day. I work with some amazingly talented and devoted people. They keep the bar raised.

What is the best piece of advice you ever received?
“If it won’t matter in five years, don’t spend more than five minutes feeling angry about it.”

What is a fun fact others may not know about you?
I like rocks! I have a not so small rock/crystal collection at home.