Rose Leopold Sussman is used to being one of the few women or the only one on conference calls, in meetings and at professional conferences. The field of emergency management, she says, is still very male dominated. But Leopold, 29, who earned a bachelor’s degree from Northeastern University in 2016 and a master’s in 2017, is convinced that women can provide exactly the same level of expertise as men.
“I wouldn’t say, ‘My team is better than your team, because we’re all women and you’re all men,’” she says. “But I think by having a diverse set of viewpoints, you will ultimately have a stronger output.”
Throughout her career in emergency management and resiliency, Leopold has worked with such public sector clients as the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Health and Human Services and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. She has helped a large private utility company prepare for safe preemptive power shut-offs during emergencies and consulted for Meta, the multinational technology conglomerate that owns Facebook, in building its global emergency management plans.
