Dr. O'Brien has a distinguished forty years' record providing leadership, program management, planning, training and exercises in the field of emergency management. He served three years as an emergency management training officer; ten years as a disaster operations planner; and eight years as the Director of Clark County, Nevada, Emergency Management developing and implementing the Las Vegas Urban Area Strategy, Concept of Operations and Operations Plans (CONOPS and OPLANS) for emergency mitigation, preparedness, response and recovery and performing disaster operations planning with continuity of government (COG) and continuity of operations planning (COOP) elements.