Full Name
Persia Payne-Hurley
Job Title
Private Sector Manager/Business EOC Coordinator
Company
North Carolina Emergency Management
Speaking At
Speaker Bio
Persia is the creator and developer of the North Carolina Business Emergency Operations Center (BEOC), the first operational BEOC in the nation. She also administers North Carolina’s Vendor Disaster Re-Entry Program, the first state-wide re-entry program. The NC BEOC currently has over 1200 corporate and business partners integrated into the State Emergency Response Team, collaborating on joint operations before, during and after disasters. The NC BEOC cross-sector response operations,
and the State Re-Entry Program have been successfully tested live during Hurricanes Matthew, Florence, Dorian, Isaias, the NC Fuel Shortages, the Western NC Wildfires, and the Charlotte Civil Disturbance. The Private Sector Program in North Carolina is considered a national model by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and was highlighted in the 2021 FEMA Building Private-Public Partnerships Guide.
Persia currently serves as the Chair of the All Hazards Consortium Private Sector Liaison Committee, member of the NEMA Private Sector Lead Coordination Group, the OnStar Public Safety Council, the Electric Infrastructure Security Council, and the NC Business Recovery Collaborative. She mentors multiple state programs on BEOC design and private sector engagement.
Additional activities, affectionately called her “side-hustles”, include guest instructor cadre for the Institute for Security Governance Naval Postgraduate School, and the design and execution of a Non-Congregate Sheltering Program (NCS) for North Carolina, aggregated through WebEOC. The NCS Program built North Carolina’s sheltering capability to 25,000 hotel rooms supporting county evacuations during the COVID-19 Pandemic.
She is a graduate of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and the Army Command & General Staff College. In her past life, she served on disaster response teams in the insurance industry and is a retired Major from the U.S. Army. Persia lives in beautiful, tropical sun-drenched Durham, NC with her husband, two children and a disaster ready Yorkie Poo.
and the State Re-Entry Program have been successfully tested live during Hurricanes Matthew, Florence, Dorian, Isaias, the NC Fuel Shortages, the Western NC Wildfires, and the Charlotte Civil Disturbance. The Private Sector Program in North Carolina is considered a national model by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and was highlighted in the 2021 FEMA Building Private-Public Partnerships Guide.
Persia currently serves as the Chair of the All Hazards Consortium Private Sector Liaison Committee, member of the NEMA Private Sector Lead Coordination Group, the OnStar Public Safety Council, the Electric Infrastructure Security Council, and the NC Business Recovery Collaborative. She mentors multiple state programs on BEOC design and private sector engagement.
Additional activities, affectionately called her “side-hustles”, include guest instructor cadre for the Institute for Security Governance Naval Postgraduate School, and the design and execution of a Non-Congregate Sheltering Program (NCS) for North Carolina, aggregated through WebEOC. The NCS Program built North Carolina’s sheltering capability to 25,000 hotel rooms supporting county evacuations during the COVID-19 Pandemic.
She is a graduate of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and the Army Command & General Staff College. In her past life, she served on disaster response teams in the insurance industry and is a retired Major from the U.S. Army. Persia lives in beautiful, tropical sun-drenched Durham, NC with her husband, two children and a disaster ready Yorkie Poo.
