The Coming Wave of Resilient Executives
- sjordan95
- 8 minutes ago
- 3 min read
Only 13 states and fewer than 150 cities and counties in the entire country have a Chief Resilience Officer, or an equivalent position, today. This is going to change as states and localities begin to understand how important the function will be for accessing international capital markets, driving down insurance costs, promoting business retention and many other benefits during normal operating conditions.
The gap between the scale of the risk and the institutional capacity built to manage it is widening, not closing. The Resilience Executive, ISD's new field manual for state and local Chief Resilience Officers, recognizes it and provides tools to cope with it.
Many people think of resilience as something you do to reduce the impact of disasters,, but even with this narrow understanding, resilience executives will become increasingly valuable. 2024 alone produced 27 separate billion-dollar disasters, $182.7 billion in damages, and a record 11 million people displaced inside the United States — the highest total of any country in the world that year. Almost everywhere in America there are some vulnerabilities. Something needs to be done to lower the risks, lower the costs, and position communities better for the future.
The legendary investor Warren Buffett said that the first rule of business should be: "Never lose money." He knew that you always had to look for the best risk-adjusted rate of returns. There's a reason the U.S. has the highest liquidity for its bonds even though they pay only 5% compared to bonds that can run to 20% or even higher for some developing countries. How much more important is this for communities - particularly for their lowest income and most vulnerable residents who can't afford to lose anything?
State and local governments all have comptrollers and risk officers at the financial level. The resilience officer takes this concept community-wide. And the importance of having this function will only continue to increase.
The Chief Resilience Officer concept isn't new — versions of it have existed in state and local government for close to a decade, and the logic behind it is sound: disasters, financial risk, infrastructure planning, and economic development are all connected, and someone needs to own that connection full-time instead of as a side responsibility bolted onto an emergency manager or a budget director.
States like Louisiana and Oregon have gone as far as codifying the office in statute. But codification isn't the same as capacity. Where the role exists at all, it's too often been implemented as a title with a convening function attached — no dedicated budget, no negotiating authority over financial instruments, and no durability that survives a change in administration.
The Resilience Executive makes the case for a sturdier version of the role, built on three things:
Expanded functions. Risk and asset assessment, financial instrument negotiation, readiness auditing, and cross-sector convening.
Real authorities. The statutory or executive authority to actually negotiate insurance and risk-transfer instruments, stand up financing mechanisms, and audit whether a jurisdiction's partners are ready — not authority that exists on paper but evaporates the moment it's tested.
A concrete toolbox. Community Resilience Networks, parametric insurance platforms, revolving loan funds, and mutual aid agreements — instruments a CRO can actually deploy, not abstractions to discuss.
The manual is a diagnostic framework, not model legislation. Every state and local jurisdiction's authorities, politics, and starting conditions are different, and a template that pretends otherwise doesn't survive contact with a real legislature or a real budget office.
The case that should outlast any one disaster cycle
Properly designed, budgeted, and authorized resilience offices can be intentionally designed to support better bond ratings, lower capital costs, business attraction, and smarter infrastructure planning — the kind of value a city council or state legislature can see on a balance sheet in a year with no disaster at all.
The manual also includes an 18-month stand-up sequence with a month-by-month checklist — what to establish first, what authority to secure before what, and what an "early win" looks like at each stage — because a framework without a sequence is just a wish list.
Who this is for
If you're a sitting or former Chief Resilience Officer, an emergency manager, an economic development officer, or a legislator or city/county manager evaluating whether your jurisdiction needs this role, this manual was built for you. Read it, use what applies to your context, and tell us where it holds up and where it doesn't — this is Version 1.0, built to evolve with practice, not a finished monument. After all, Buffett's rule should apply even more to communities caring for their most vulnerable than it does to business.
The Resilience Executive: A Field Manual for State and Local Chief Resilience Officers is available now on ISD's Insights page.