Elizabeth A. Zimmerman is a Venture Partner in the Sustainability Practice of RIDGE-LANE LP.
Ms. Zimmerman is an emergency manager with over 30 years of experience. She received a Presidential appointment in 2009 to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) where she served as the Associate Administrator in the Office of Response and Recovery (ORR). During her tenure, she oversaw more than 930 disasters, emergencies and fire declarations, delivering over $6.5 billion to 1.7 million individuals and families and more than $27 billion in federal disaster assistance to state, local, tribal and non-profit groups.
While at FEMA, Ms. Zimmerman directed one of the most significant changes to FEMA’s statutory authorities in the Agency’s history through the development, coordination, and implementation of the Sandy Recovery Improvement Act. This effort resulted in the re-engineering of FEMA’s Individual Assistance and Public Assistance programs to streamline the delivery and improve the payment processes. She also collaborated very closely with the Flood Insurance and Mitigation Assistance leadership to ensure communities impacted by disaster received the full benefit of FEMA grants.
Prior to her work at FEMA, Ms. Zimmerman served as the Assistant Director of Recovery at the State of Arizona’s Division of Emergency Management. While there, she directed and coordinated recovery operations as the Governor’s Authorized Representative in nine major disaster declarations and 51 state disaster declarations. Ms. Zimmerman was the HKNet Manager and Technical Recruiting Agent at Hall Kinon in Utah and Arizona prior to that, which followed a decade of varying positions with the State of Utah’s Division of Emergency Management.
Ms. Zimmerman holds a bachelor’s degree from Brigham Young University. She is certified as an Executive Leader by the Naval Postgraduate School’s Center for Homeland Defense and Security and is certified in the Professional Development Series at the Emergency Management Institute. Ms. Zimmerman also attended the Leadership Development Program at Arizona Government University.
