History of the California Resiliency Alliance
In the early 2000’s several large disaster events including 9/11, Hurricanes Katrina and Ike, California wildfires, and the Iowa Floods highlighted the need for better availability and coordination of needed resources during a disaster. Communities across the nation began to recognize the interdependencies that existed between public and private sectors: various public agencies, non-governmental organization service providers, and diverse industry sectors and critical infrastructure. As a result, the Business Executives for National Security (BENS), a network of business leaders contributing expertise and best practices to assist the national security, launched several regional partnership councils: New Jersey (2003), Georgia and Kansas City (2004), California – Bay Area and LA/Orange Counties (2005), Iowa (2006), and Colorado (2007).
The massive 2007 Southern California wildfires triggered private sector leaders and State officials’ interest in establishing formal state-wide public-private partnerships. In 2008, the same year California’s Governor’s Office of Emergency Services (OES) and Office of Homeland Security were merged into a single, streamlined cabinet-level agency, a series of meetings were held to discuss the need for state-wide public-private partnership coordination. The discussions resulted in the merger of two regional California Business Executives for National Security (BENS) councils into a single statewide one – the California Resiliency Alliance (CRA).
The CRA was established to serve as a neutral, independent, non-governmental facilitator of public-private collaboration with the objective of building a resilient California.
In 2009, the CRA became an independent 501(c)(3) nonprofit Public Benefit Corporation with the purpose of strengthening the capacity of the State of California through public-private partnership to improve community disaster response and recovery through effective cross-sector collaboration. At the time the CRA engaged over 100 companies to assist county and state emergency management, public health and homeland security agencies before, during and after a disaster.
From those early years, through two transitions in CRA leadership and CalOES’s creation of the Office of Private Sector / NGO Engagement in 2015, the CRA has shifted its mission from a narrow focus on response and recovery to a broader focus. The CRA’s mission today is to curate and share trusted information on the threat landscape for use in planning and preparedness initiatives by stakeholders and serve as a nexus between the public and private sectors to champion cross-sector understanding and collaboration.
While building on the past, the CRA looks towards creating a more resilient California prepared for the complex world of the future.