A disaster resilience strategist and an executive with broad range of senior management and strategic partnerships experience. I am founder of the Global Resilience Collaborative (GRC), a think-tank and network of interdisciplinary professionals as well as ResilienceReporter.com, a daily resilience news, analysis and resource portal focusing on making resilience a recognisable topic for the general population.Achievements include the design and implementation of Step Up, the largest disaster resilience program in Australia. This award-winning program is based on large-scale collaboration, bringing together various levels of government, major corporates, NFPs, and research institutions. A significant part of the program was dedicated to Australia’s first resilience building initiative for the business sector. I received a special commendation from Australia’s Prime Minister for ‘Outstanding Leadership’ in managing the State’s disaster recovery following Cyclone Larry in 2006, and also received recognition for my role in the disaster response during the 2011 Brisbane floods. An active public speaker and presenter, I regularly write about resilience and collaboration and have authored two books on disaster resilience, collaboration and strategy (The Collaboration Instinct and When We Stopped Eating Bananas). I am a founding member of the City Security and Resilience Network Australia (CSARN) and currently serve on the Inclusive Brisbane Board a body advising Brisbane’s Lord Mayor on a range of social issues impacting the resilience of the city. “Resilience is best defined, not as a response or reaction to a disruptive event but rather despite it and regardless of its likelihood. Resilience is the ability to grow in one’s manifestly self-generating direction while simultaneously absorbing shocks and disruptions, and acquiring new strategies (adaptive capacity) but never abandoning one’s ‘true end’, be it on an individual, organisational or socio-economic system level.” – Jelenko Dragisic