Lee Cowan

Lee has been supporting emergency response communications since 2002, starting her crisis career in London, supporting responses to flood, lightning strikes, poisoning incidents and more.

Returning to NZ in 2007, she worked in the Manawatu on flooding, droughts, volcanic unrest and a lahar. In 2010 and 2011, she was a PIM through the Christchurch earthquakes; the PIM on-call when the February earthquake hit, and the PIM to transition the function into recovery. She was one of the original EMPA Fellows, helping to bring EMPA to New Zealand. 

In the subsequent years, she's supported communications on floods, fires, earthquakes, bomb threats, zoo tragedies, a number of public health events, M.Bovis outbreak, COVID response and vaccine rollout, to name a few. In more recent years, as her availability to work long hours in EOCs has reduced, Lee's been providing reputational crisis response advice, and delivering training and upskilling support through her business, Avalon Communications. 

Lee lives in Hamilton with her young son.