Monique Lewis

She has an M.S. in Civil & Environmental Engineering and a Masters in Urban & Regional Planning, along with Graduate Certificates in Global Health and in Disaster Management & Humanitarian Assistance. Her Bachelor's is in Political Science and also in Conflict Resolution.

She is trained by the United Nations, Center for Excellence in Disaster Management and Humanitarian Assistance, FEMA, and USAID/OFDA.

She is also doing her Doctorate at Georgetown University focusing on the National Security and Child Advocacy of the Children of ISIS with an expected graduation date in May 2023. She also serves as a Reviewer for the esteemed peer-reviewed academic Journal of Emergency Management. 

Monique moved to the D.C. area from Honolulu, Hawaii where she lived for almost 14 years. In her free time, she is a PADI Divemaster, a volunteer mediator, and before moving to Washington D.C. was earning her private pilot’s license in Honolulu, Hawaii. She has traveled to 50 countries and is the very proud mother of a little boy and a baby girl.

Monique is a disaster management and humanitarian assistance subject matter expert with a diverse set of skills spanning from emergency preparedness and mitigation to training and education, project management, engineering, program implementation, and planning. Comfortable with ambiguity, presents well, and able to work with technical personnel and senior level officials, Monique has led international teams to write the AAR for the U.S. response to the Nepal Earthquake in 2014 and provided recommendations to a $500 million-dollar World Bank development project in Bangladesh. She has extensive experience conducting strategic assessments and translating leadership vision into actionable goals. 

An excellent communicator, results driven, capable of working in high-pressure environments, and coordinating multi-million-dollar projects, Monique has facilitated and coordinated teams successfully at the international level and at the interagency whole of community level within the U.S., which developed successful deliverables and program outcomes. 

She spent two years at the Pentagon leading emergency management and writing policy for the U.S. Air Force and served as a member mitigating climate change at U.S. military instillations around the world. Internationally, she was the assessment lead in Mongolia, Nepal, Bangladesh, Serbia, and Bosnia-Herzegovina working at the Embassy and Ministry levels to assist Partner Nations in developing their emergency management agencies by identifying their areas of improvement, strengths, strategy, and capability gaps. 

Additionally, she led, coordinated, and participated in bilateral and multilateral engagements at the strategic level in Republic of Georgia, Germany, Indonesia, Cambodia, Vietnam, Thailand, Philippines, Japan, and Guam. She also served as the Team Lead for the development of regionalized disaster management and peacekeeping curriculums at two peacekeeping training centers located in East and West Africa. 

Monique was a Lead Writer for the Homeland Security Exercise and Evaluation Program (HSEEP) 2020 Doctrine revision for the FEMA National Exercise Division. The effort included stakeholder outreach, interagency adjudication, a policy rewrite, and the development of a course curriculum for the Emergency Management Institute. She also was one of a three-person team developing the United States first ever Cybersecurity Grant via the Invest in America Act where a $1-billion dollar grant program was developed for State, Local, and Tribal governments can apply to increase their cybersecurity capacity and capability.