Kathleen Criss, CBCP Director, Preparedness Operations Emergency Management Department University of Pittsburgh Medical Center.

Ms. Criss became a Certified Business Continuity Professional in February 1994. She has experience in all phases of emergency preparedness, business continuity and disaster recovery. In April 2001, she became an inductee in the Contingency Planning and Management Hall of Fame, Practitioner II category.

Kathleen Criss was hired by Magee-Womens Hospital in 1998 to coordinate the implementation of a disaster recovery program for the protection of mission-critical applications of the hospital. She was a member of the Year 2000 team for the development of the hospital’s incident command team, a physical command center, and the creation of departmental contingency plans.

In October 2001, she became a member of the UPMC Bioterrorism Preparedness Executive Committee, whose mission was to develop a system-wide program for managing “all hazards” and bioterrorism disasters. She was a subject matter expert for the four-year development of the Strategic Biodefense Emergency Operations and Communications System (PrepLinkSM). She is also a member of the UPMC H1N1 Pandemic Task Force, the Southwest PA Pandemic Planning Group, and the Pennsylvania Statewide H1N1 Task Force to provide guidance for pandemic plan development and develop medical surge capabilities.

Ms. Criss is also the coordinator of the Southwestern PA Emergency Response Group (Region 13) Metropolitan Medical Response System. She provides leadership in the development of medical surge, mass prophylaxis, and mass fatality planning for Region 13 and is a member of the Region 13 Incident Management Team for Emergency Support Function 8–Health and Medical Services.

Ms. Criss has participated in disaster drill planning and real world response with local, regional, state-wide agencies and military units. She was a member of the G-20 Summit Health & Medical Planning Subcommittee to develop a healthcare response plan for hospitals in Region 13. During the G-20 Summit on September 24-25, 2009, she staffed the Multi-Agency Communications Center (MACC) to coordinate preparedness and communications with healthcare organizations. She has participated in planning and response activities for several patient moves including the closures of the UPMC Rehabilitation Hospital, UPMC Soluth Side and the move of patients from the old Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh to its new facility several miles away.

Prior to working at UPMC, Ms. Criss was an Operations Officer and Business Continuity Specialist of the PNC Financial Services team. She was instrumental in implementing an enterprise-wide emergency response program including the development of emergency response teams in major markets to address all-hazards emergency response and recovery efforts for natural, man-made and technical outages. She developed scenarios and conducted annual full scale disaster exercises between PNC and emergency/public agencies in Pittsburgh, Erie, and Harrisburg, Pennsylvania; Cincinnati, Ohio; and Louisville, Kentucky, to train the response team members and validate response plans.