Mayor John Hickenlooper has hired internationally renowned emergency management veteran Ellis M. Stanley, Sr., as Director of Democratic National Convention Planning for the City’s Office of Emergency Management.

Stanley will oversee completion of the City’s overall integrated emergency management and business continuity plans in time for the August 25-28 Democratic National Convention, and will coordinate related training efforts among City departments. He also will lead the City’s coordination and collaboration with federal and state agencies it relates to consequence management and work closely with the Denver Police Department on safety planning for the convention.

Stanley is on loan to the City from his position as Director of Western Emergency Management Services for Dewberry LLC, a national planning, design and management services firm. He will remain with the City under contract through August.

“Ellis Stanley is one of the foremost emergency planners in the world,” Hickenlooper said. “We are incredibly fortunate to have him on our Democratic National Convention planning team. His experience with myriad significant events – including three national political conventions, the 2006 Olympic Games in Atlanta and the 1994 papal visit and World Youth Conference here in Denver – will serve us extremely well.”

Stanley brings 32 years of work experience in emergency management to his new role. Prior to joining Dewberry’s Los Angeles office in 2007, he served the City of Los Angeles for 10 years, first as Assistant City Administrative Officer and then as general manager of the City’s Emergency Preparedness Office. Previously, he spent another decade as Director of the Atlanta-Fulton County (Ga.) Emergency Management Agency, a gubernatorial appointment. While in Atlanta, he oversaw event planning for the 1988 Democratic National Convention, a 1995 visit by Nelson Mandela and the 2006 International Olympic Games.

During a five-year stint as Director of the Durham-Durham County (N.C.) Emergency Management Agency, Stanley focused largely on hazardous materials planning for the world’s largest research park in the North Carolina Triangle area.

Stanley began his career in 1975 as Director of Emergency Management for Brunswick County, N.C. As First Fire Marshal and Fire and Rescue Commissioner there, he was extensively involved in hurricane planning and response. He also developed one of the first fixed nuclear facility plans in the nation following the 1979 nuclear emergency at the Three Mile Island power plant in Pennsylvania.

Other major events in which Stanley has been involved include the 1984 and 1996 Summer Olympics, Atlanta’s 1996 Centennial Games and the 1995 Special Olympics in the City of New Haven, Conn. An accomplished trainer, he has been asked to provide emergency management training for the nine host cities of the World Cup Soccer Games of 1994 and other cities hosting Super Bowls, World Series and NBA championships.

Stanley serves on the Homeland Security Advisory Council’s Emergency Responder Senior Advisory Committee, the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s Regional Advisory Council for Region IX and the National Advisory Board for Harvard University’s National Preparedness Leadership Initiative. He was inducted into the Contingency Planning and Management Hall of Fame in 2005.

He earned a bachelor’s degree in political science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and is also a graduate of the John F. Kennedy School of Government’s National Preparedness Leadership Initiative.