HMDR Division Leadership

Molly Mowery, AICP is the Division Chair. As Chair, Molly leads many of the Division's essential activities, including coordinating Executive Committee meetings, participating in the APA Divisions Council, chairing the Division’s annual business meeting, and ensuring that the Division meets APA’s performance and reporting expectations. In her professional work, Molly serves as the Executive Director of the Community Wildfire Planning Center and is founder of Wildfire Planning International. She works across North America to provide technical wildfire and land use planning guidance, resources, and trainings for communities and government agencies including FEMA, CAL FIRE, and the USDA Forest Service. Molly has also published widely on wildfire planning topics, including the APA PAS Report, Planning the Wildland-Urban Interface. She has a bachelor of arts from Naropa University and a master in city planning from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Chrissy Caggiano, AICP, PP is the Division Chair-Elect. As Chair-Elect, she leads the Professional Development Committee and supports Molly in her Chair duties when needed. She previously volunteered as the Division Secretary-Treasurer for four years. Chrissy is Technical Manager in Planning at Michael Baker International. She specializes in hazard mitigation and community planning and currently manages the capability and capacity building functions on FEMA’s Community Engagement and Risk Communication contract. A firm believer in the value of hands-on support, she leads CERC’s the Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities Direct Technical Assistance Initiative task order. Based in Philadelphia, Chrissy holds her bachelor’s degree in Geography from the George Washington University and a master in city planning from the University of Pennsylvania Weitzman School of Design.

Ryan Maye Handy, AICP, is the Division Secretary-Treasurer. Ryan is a wildfire and land use planning specialist at Headwater Economics, where she helps run the Community Planning Assistance for Wildfire program. She is currently based in Jackson, Wyoming. She previously worked with the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy and traveled around the United States teaching and facilitating scenario planning workshops. Prior to her career as a planner, she spent more than a decade working as a report for newspapers in Texas and Colorado, where she covered everything from county government to oil and gas regulation. Ryan has undergraduate degrees in Russian and Comparative Literature from Georgetown University, a masters in journalism from Columbia University and a masters in urban and regional planning from the University of Colorado - Denver.

Stacy Wright, FAICP, PMP, CFM is the Past Division Chair. Stacy is Senior Technical Manager with Atkins, N.A., working in Raleigh, North Carolina. She is a seasoned planner sharing her expertise and passion related to hazard mitigation, post-disaster support, risk communication and risk/vulnerability assessment with communities and agencies across the United States. She currently serves as Risk Reduction and Hazard Mitigation Lead and subject matter expert for the STARR II joint venture supporting FEMA Risk MAP activities related to post-disaster support, natural hazard risk assessment and hazard mitigation. She is the Task Order Manager for FEMA’s Maui Wildfires Mitigation Assessment Team and recently served as the Contractor Lead for the Marshall Fire Mitigation Assessment Team efforts in Colorado for the. She obtained her Bachelor of Arts in Public Policy Analysis from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1996, as well as an Executive Certificate in Community Preparedness and Disaster Management in 2007. She has been involved in the post-disaster response, recovery, and/or redevelopment process for over 160 federally declared disaster events resulting from various hazard impacts.