COVID19 has presented many challenges for organizations and their workforce. One of those challenges is the psychological impact. We all process stress differently. Some can manage it better than others. It’s important that leaders understand what kind of pressure individuals might be under trying to manage their personal and business lives and have mechanisms to support them.  

Roberts’s bio  

Prior to his arrival at the Foreign Service Institute (FSI) as a Crisis Management Consultant, Colonel Robert Fagan, U.S. Army Retired (Rob) was a Foreign Area Officer (FAO) and served in seven U.S. Embassies and Consulates in the Western Hemisphere which included Peru, El Salvador, Guatemala, Brazil, Bolivia, Ecuador, and Chile.  He speaks Spanish and Portuguese fluently.  His roles included being a Defense Attaché, Army Attaché, and Senior Security Assistance Advisor which afforded him the opportunity to be a senior member of multiple country teams and Emergency Action Committees (EACs) at U.S. Embassies and Consulates.  In addition to combat, Rob also worked on several contingency deployments in various positions during Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief (HA/DR) operations for hurricanes, floods, earthquakes and other disasters. 

Rob earned a BA in Latin American Studies from Southern Illinois University and an MA in International Relations from Boston University, an MBA from the University of Phoenix, MA from the National Intelligence University, and MA from the U.S. Army War College.  Additionally, he is a graduate of the Brazilian and U.S. Army Command and General Staff Colleges while also graduating from the U.S. Air Force and U.S. Army War Colleges.  He is a Certified Emergency Manager (CEM) and graduate of the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s (FEMA) National Emergency Management Advanced Academy (NEMAA) and Master Exercise Practitioner Program (MEP).  Rob publishes regularly, presents his work in practitioner and academic settings, and collaborates with practitioners routinely.  He is globally engaged with various humanitarian assistance and emergency management topics by sitting on the editorial advisory panel of the Crisis Response Journal while also publishing with them.  Rob has recently been accepted into the 2020 cohort for the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s (FEMA) National Emergency Management Executive Academy (NEMEA).