June 25, 2025

#26-25

NYCEM’S LATEST PREP TALK PODCAST EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS COMMUNITY PARTNERSHIPS, STRENGTHENING COMMUNITIES PROGRAM AHEAD OF COASTAL STORM SEASON

Prep Talk {Click here to listen to episode 98}

NEW YORK — Being prepared for emergencies requires planning and collaboration ahead of an emergency. To help support New Yorkers prepare for any incident, New York City Emergency Management (NYCEM) educates, trains and supports community groups through its Strengthening Communities program. The program, which was launched in 2021, offers grants to community networks to build their emergency plans and support local community resources.

On the latest episode of Prep Talk, we speak with two program alumni, Michelle Bascome, director of programs and development at Nonprofit Staten Island, and Laura McKenna, lead of the Southern Brooklyn COAD. Both shared how they integrate tools from the program into their work with their communities from previous emergencies and ahead of coastal storm season. While the 2025 Atlantic hurricane season started on June 1 and runs through November 30, August through November is when the Northeast sees more impacts, such as storms like Henri, Ida and Isaias. 

You can listen to Prep Talk on SoundCloud.

Profiles

Laura McKenna is lead of the Southern Brooklyn Community Organizations Active in Disaster (COAD). McKenna has been involved in emergency response since Superstorm Sandy impacted New York City in October 2012, when she acted as vice chair of the Brooklyn Longterm Recovery Group. With years of experience in professional publishing, Laura has worked with housing nonprofits since 2014 and with the Southern Brooklyn COAD since 2019, where she is the lead for forty organizations and agencies located on and around the Coney Island Peninsula that focus on preparing residents for emergencies and disasters. She holds a master’s degree from New York University in Psychology with a concentration in cognition and adult learning, and a bachelor’s degree from Cornell University in Linguistics. The granddaughter of Irish and Danish immigrants who landed at Ellis Island (or who, in one case, jumped ship and swam to shore), she is passionate about multilingual communication, language justice, and supporting people searching for a better life. Laura has studied French, German, Spanish, and Arabic, and is learning Russian.

Michelle Bascombe is the director of Programs and Development at Nonprofit Staten Island, where she leads efforts to strengthen the borough’s nonprofit sector through capacity building, civic engagement, and community resilience initiatives. She also serves as the lead organizer of the Staten Island Community Organizations Active in Disaster (SI COAD), a cross-sector coalition focused on helping local organizations prepare for, respond to, and recover from emergencies. Michelle’s work in the nonprofit sector began in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, when she served as a borough-based and later citywide volunteer- and program coordinator, and as a founding Board member of Staten Island's LTRO. Her work bridges nonprofit strategy and community preparedness, with a focus on equitable access to resources across the city. 

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