The finalists for WashingtonExec’s Pinnacle Awards were announced Oct. 13, and we’ll be highlighting some of them until the event takes place virtually Dec. 8.
Next is Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Government Executive of the Year finalist Paul Huang, who’s assistant administrator for the Federal Insurance and Mitigation Administration at FEMA. Here, he talks key achievements, primary focus areas going forward, proud career moments and more.
What key achievements did you have in 2020/2021?
In January 2021, I was asked to act as the associate administrator of resilience, one of the most senior positions at FEMA. In this role, I initiated and helped establish FEMA’s first ever Equity Enterprise Steering Group and Climate Adaptation Enterprise Steering Group. These ESGs allow for collaborating across the agency, sharing of best practices and data and coordinating policy setting.
This has set up our agency well to take on the new administration priorities of equity and climate change and has netted some quick wins already: improved equitable outcomes in eligibility and technical assistance in FEMA programs.
Additionally, I helped lead a transformational change in the National Flood Insurance Program through leveraging new data, technology and actuarial practices to make flood insurance premiums more fair and equitable. This program change has already generated over 6.5 million quotes and 25,000 new flood insurance policies that reflect the true risk or individual structures in the nation.
What has made you successful in your current role?
Being true to my core values has helped me succeed in my current role. When I first took over the federal insurance organization five years ago, I wrote down some key values that were important to me. These included “positivity,” “collaboration” and “intellectual curiosity”; these values are true to me and I carry myself in a way that is positive and collaborative with an inquisitive mindset.
I wanted to shape an organization that believed in and practiced these core values. I began talking about these values from day one, I spent a lot of time talking to our leaders and staff about what these values meant to them and how we could operationalize these values.
We changed our interviews to standardize questions centered around our core values, we changed our reward systems to recognize and praise those who practiced our core values, and we created innovation/learning brown-bags and “shark tank” events to foster intellectual curiosity.
These values resonated with our team and really has changed our culture for the better and the results have followed. For the fourth consecutive year, the Federal Insurance Directorate’s Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey results were among the top three in the agency. FID outperformed the department and agency averages in all questions.
Additionally, the attrition rate of our 100+ organization is close to the lowest in the agency. Throughout the past challenging year, I’ve emphasized the importance of caring for our staff and continued building the sense of community and the importance of our values in making FID and FEMA a great place to work.
What are your primary focuses going forward, and why are those so important to the future of the nation?
A critical focus has to be equity. Through statute and regulations, we implement programs that are intended to help Americans across the nation. Through looking at data, we are now questioning whether or not our programs are truly doing so equitably. What we know is that natural disasters disproportionally impact socially vulnerable communities and low-income individuals more.
However, we are starting to see that many of our programs continue to benefit wealthier communities and individuals more. In a recent data analysis, individual aid payouts are larger to majority populations versus minorities. I’m helping shape the new FEMA Strategic plan, and Goal 1 will be focused on equity.
The first tactic is to ensure that we are hiring and growing a diverse and inclusive workforce who mirror those that we serve, the next tactic is to tackle barriers to accessing our programs, and the final tactic is to re-evaluate what outcomes our programs are looking to achieve and to change our policies to impact more equitable outcomes.
How do you help shape the next generation of government leaders/industry leaders?
I feel a duty to help the next generation of government and industry leaders. Two years ago, I started a mentorship program in the Federal Insurance and Mitigation Administration. We have an agency and departmentwide mentoring program, but the feedback we had heard from staff was that they wanted something closer to their organization. I helped shape the curriculum for the program and prioritized funding to launch the pilot.
The initial year, we had 15 paired mentors-mentees using a rigorous matching process. In mid-point and end-of-year surveys to check progress and feedback, the program scored extremely favorable as compared to mentorship programs across government and industry.
As a result, we renewed the program and it has continued to grow each year. I am an active mentor and am actively mentoring five staff members of various grades.
As a regular practice, I have prioritized the time I spend mentoring and will clear my calendar for any situational mentoring my mentees beyond our standard sessions. The new FEMA administrator has asked me to lead a career pathways project for the agency to provide a more customer centric approach for our employees to navigate their careers at FEMA.
Through this project, we’ve interviewed dozens of executives and staff about how best to improve career pathways at FEMA, we’ve researched best practices from industry and government and recently issued a survey to 20K+ FEMA employees to hear their voice. At the end of this calendar year, we will make a set of recommendations to improve our agency’s career pathways for all employees and tie the work to our agency’s multiyear strategic plan so that we commit the proper time and resources to invest in our most important asset, our people.
I also guest lecture several times a year at the University of Pennsylvania Wharton Risk Center, Georgetown Risk Management School and the University of Maryland to speak to future leaders in the field of emergency management. These engagements are a great exchange of ideas and I avail myself as a resource for these future leaders in emergency management; the time I spent is all voluntary and outside of work hours, and I find the experience extremely rewarding.
Looking back at your career, what are you most proud of?
When I first became a senior executive, I was asked by the deputy administrator to attend a Department of Homeland Security Asian American and Pacific Islander month event at the U.S. Coast Guard. I left that wonderful event thinking that I needed to do more to improve the diversity and inclusion within our agency. At the time, there was not much interest or support for employee resource groups within our agency.
I am extremely proud that I created the first AAPI FEMA Employee Resource Group in our agency. Through my leadership, AAPI Heritage Month Events have become routine, our membership has grown tremendously and perhaps best of all the agency has grown its number of FERGs (PRIDE, African American, Women’s Forum and more) as they saw the importance and impact of FERGs for our staff.
The FERG community at FEMA is strong and there is a lot of allyship between each FERG; this proved to be invaluable over this past year as the social justice movement took hold after several tragic events impacted the African-American community.
The FERGs came together to support each other cross-promoting events and joining in several agencywide listening events to help the African-American community heal. Little did we know that the coronavirus would create a surge in AAPI hate leading up to the tragic shootings in Atlanta of several Asian women. The FERGs reciprocated in joining listening sessions for our AAPI community and helping us feel supported and heard.
With the new administration’s focus on equity, the FERGs are now helping shape policy, provide inputs and insights on communications to diverse communities, and helping grow, recruit and retain a diverse and inclusive workforce.