Walsh to appoint ‘chief resilience officer’
Mayor Martin J. Walsh is set to announce today the appointment of Atyia Martin, a Boston Public Health Commission director with FBI and Boston police experience, as the Hub’s “chief resilience officer.”
It’s a $110,000 grantfunded post focused on girding the Hub’s poorer residents to deal with traumatic events and disasters such as extreme weather and terrorism.
“After disasters you really start to see a stark contrast of inequities within communities,” Martin told the Herald. “In the past we have asked people to be prepared, but if your situation doesn’t allow you do all of the things that we’re asking people to do ... there’s some definite challenges.”
Martin, a Hub native who since 2011 has directed the Boston Public Health Commission’s Office of Public Health Preparedness, is a former interim director of the Boston Regional Intelligence Center, which coordinates information sharing among federal, state and local law enforcement agencies. She also worked as an intelligence assistant at the FBI, dealing in surveillance and organized crime.
The two-year post is funded by the Rockefeller Foundation, which in 2013 launched the $164 million “100 Resilient Cities” initiative to prepare for climate change, disease pandemics, economic fluctuations, terrorism and other potential “shocks and stresses” on 21st century cities.
Under the program, member cities are connected to services from the private sector and nongovernmental groups to help implement resiliency plans.
“City resilience is about making a city better, in both good times and bad, for the benefit of all its citizens, particularly the poor and vulnerable,” said Andrew Brenner, of the initiative.
Brenner said that at the end of Martin’s two-year term, the foundation would hope to see a strategy “that serves as a catalyst for action in the city,” and hopes the chief resilience officer position “continues to be an integral part of city government, well beyond our financial support for the position ends.”
According to the city, Boston’s resilience initiative will focus on disparities in health, economic and educational outcomes, and Martin will be charged with fostering a citywide dialogue on the root causes of these disparities.
Martin said one change she wants to see is how the city connects people who experience physiological trauma to support services: “I would really like to see us move forward and have a more socialized way that we’re dealing with that.”