Suzannah Jones, MPA, MBA, CEM, is Associate Managing Director of Community & Infrastructure Services at Witt O'Brien's, where she leads the firm's national portfolio of FEMA Public Assistance recovery engagements spanning ten states and billions in federal funding. She brings a state-government perspective to this panel from more than a decade at the Texas Division of Emergency Management (TDEM), where she served as Deputy Chief for Recovery and Mitigation — overseeing more than $20 billion in FEMA Public Assistance and Hazard Mitigation Grant Program funding and serving as the state's Alternate FEMA State Coordinating Officer and Alternate Governor's Authorized Representative across 16 presidentially declared disasters, including Hurricane Harvey. Her work centered on the governance structures, disaster-finance systems, and interstate mutual aid mechanisms — including the Emergency Management Assistance Compact (EMAC) — that determine whether states can mount a coordinated, multi-jurisdictional response, giving her a practitioner's view of both the current state and the ideal state of collaborative frameworks for multi-state emergency management.