GHI’s  staff is comprised of experienced professionals with diverse backgrounds, including earthquake science, engineering, medicine, law, communications, finance and international development. 

Heidi Stenner is a geologist with 25 years of experience investigating geologic hazards and collaborating with communities to become more resilient to the serious risks. She is currently managing a four-year USAID-funded program to improve scientists’ and the risk management community’s understanding of how local seismic, volcanic, and other hazards, and their impacts to people, may be amplified or compounded by climate change. The program is identifying potential ways to reduce these changing risks, and will carry out several projects to increase safety and resilience in communities of several particularly at-risk countries.

While at GeoHazards International (GHI), Heidi has managed a variety of projects, such as empowering young people in Haiti to increase their own and their community’s resilience to earthquakes, tsunami, and other coastal hazards. Other managed projects include landslide investigations in India, quantifying building losses from earthquakes in Bhutan, and assessing the feasibility of earthquake-protective desks for schoolchildren in Nepal. Prior to GHI, Heidi was a researcher with the U.S. Geological Survey; was contracted to the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to support emergency preparedness; managed an interactive, public earthquake exhibit; and has volunteered with several disaster agencies, including the American Red Cross. She physically investigated recent earthquakes and the landslides and liquefaction triggered in China, Mexico, Turkey, and the USA; and conducted field research into paleo-earthquakes in Mexico, Argentina, Mongolia, and the USA.