Our Team | shorelinerisk

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Our Team

Mary-Gardner Coppola

Founder and Principal

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Mary-Gardner Coppola is a global leader in international affairs, diplomacy, and strategic defense policy. She has advised senior government, military, and multilateral leaders on complex security, humanitarian, and development challenges, with experience spanning Asia, Latin America, and the Indo-Pacific. As a senior executive advisor and strategist, she guides organizational vision, global partnerships, and international engagement, leveraging her expertise to align operations, policy, and innovation in support of resilience and security objectives worldwide.

Previously, Ms. Coppola served as a U.S. Foreign Service Officer with assignments in Singapore, China, Thailand, and Ecuador, as well as in key policy positions at the U.S. Department of State, including Southeast Asia Country Director and United Nations Policy Officer. She later served as Special Advisor to the Commandant of the U.S. Marine Corps, where she designed and executed executive-level engagement strategies to shape force modernization initiatives. In Hawaii, she served as Foreign Policy Advisor to the Commander, supporting Indo-Pacific operations and defense policy development.

Her career began as a policy analyst with the Open Society Institute, establishing a foundation for her long-standing focus on governance, diplomacy, and international cooperation. She has also been active in mentoring and advancing the next generation of women leaders in international security and foreign policy.

Damon P. Coppola, MEM, ARM

Founder and Principal

Damon Coppola is an emergency and risk management global thought leader. He has guided the development of programs and policy from the most local communities to the national government level in countries throughout the Americas, Europe, Asia, and the Pacific, as well as for regional and international organizations including the United Nations and the World Bank. He also provides programmatic and planning assistance to major private-sector clients, nonprofit organizations, and academic institutions, including enterprise risk management and private sector involvement in disasters.

Mr. Coppola is a recognized specialist in emergency management training and education, having developed and co-developed higher education and professional training programs for the FEMA Emergency Management Institute and for the Department of Homeland Security National Training and Education Division. In addition to this work, Mr. Coppola serves as an adjunct faculty member at the University of South Carolina Arnold School of Public Health where he teaches on the topic of community disaster resilience.

Mr. Coppola has authored and co-authored more than two dozen academic and professional emergency management textbooks that are currently in use at over 200 colleges and universities. Several of these books have been deemed "essential texts" by the FEMA Higher Education Program. His joint effort Introduction to Emergency Management was named the most influential emergency management textbook by the FEMA Emergency Management Institute.

Mr. Coppola holds a Master of Engineering Management (MEM) in Crisis, Emergency, and Risk Management from the George Washington University School of Engineering and Applied Science, and was awarded the Associate in Risk Management (ARM) professional certification by the American Institute for Chartered Property Casualty Underwriters.

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