CommHIT24 Summit

For more than 30 years, John Spence has helped people and businesses, including large corporations, worldwide harness success. John is the author of five books and co-author of several more, a business consultant, workshop facilitator, keynote speaker and executive coach with a client list that includes numerous Fortune 500 firms (including Coca-Cola, Apple, and Microsoft) to small businesses, professional associations and other organizations. John’s areas of expertise include: leadership, high-performance teams, managing change, organizational culture, consultative selling, strategic planning, strategy execution and the future of business.

Dr. Kellie O’Dare is an Assistant Professor of Health Policy and Management with the Institute of Public Health at Florida A&M University and the Founder and Executive Director of the 2nd Alarm Project. She is the Principal Investigator on $5.5 million in federal and state funding for first responder resiliency initiatives. Dr. O’Dare has actively worked with dozens of Florida based agencies to conduct needs assessments, provide capacity building for peer support teams, and develop BHAP programs. She has conducted mental health training with hundreds of first responders, family members, and leadership teams and functioned as a behavioral health navigator and clinical advisor to peer support teams. She has also served on local and statewide critical incident activations and deployments, including to Surfside, FL in 2021 and Hurricane Ian in 2022. She frequently provides consultation and technical assistance to first responder organizations across the country on best practices in building mental wellness programs.

Zach Eichholz is the Chief Resilience Manager and Emergency Operations Coordinator for the City of Cape Canaveral in Brevard County, Florida. He received a Bachelor of Science in Sustainability Studies (2016) and a Master of Science in Interdisciplinary Sciences (2019) from the Florida Institute of Technology before being hired in by the City of Cape Canaveral to help write the City’s first-ever Resiliency Action Plan. Five years later, with this action plan in place, Zach is in charge of Cape Canaveral’s Resilience Division – set within the Community and Economic Development Department – where he oversees the implementation of a variety of sustainability and resilience-based initiatives that include but are not limited to renewable energy deployment, flood mitigation and adaption projects, disaster preparation and relief, fleet electrification, and decarbonization efforts. Before this position, Zach worked as a project assistant through his time as a master’s student researching and writing the City of Satellite Beach 2017 Sustainability Action Plan; developing a series of actionable targets designed to reduce the City’s environmental footprint and mitigate future climate change impacts.