Chris Maier is a National Weather Service National Warning Coordination Meteorologist in Silver Spring, Maryland. With NWS since 1992, for most of that time he has worked directly with with our nation's emergency management community. He has assisted the Federal Emergency Management Agency on a variety of issues—most recently, on improvements to the Disaster Declarations process and the creation of a National Mitigation Framework. He is the NWS' liaison with the National Emergency Management Association and the International Association of Emergency Managers. Mr. Mier manages the NWS' StormReady, TsunamiReady, Skywarn weather spotter and Post-Storm Data Acquisition programs. Prior to his 2006 arrival at NWS Headquarters in Silver Spring, Marymland he was the Warning Coordination Meteorologist in Juneau, Alaska, and the Utah Fire Weather Program Manager in Salt Lake City. For a decade he worked as an Incident Meteorologist, working on wildfires and oil spills as a part of incident management teams. A 1991 graduate of Rutgers University with a degree in meteorology, Mr. Maier was born and raised in the Philadelphia area.