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Ford Rowan is an expert in crisis management and conflict resolution.

• He has worked for 20 years on health emergencies and is helping respond to the coronavirus pandemic. He is the chairman of the National Center for Critical Incident Analysis which was formed at the National Defense University. He coauthored a report, Weathering the Storm: Leading Your Organization Through a Pandemic.
• He is working to improve health emergency readiness. The US response to COVID-19 has been so flawed that America’s adversaries recognize how much damage a bioterror attack could cause, Rowan’s doctoral dissertation was Defending Against Bioterrorism: Lessons of the 2001 Anthrax Attack.
• He is working to enhance ethical treatment. He is a member of the advisory board of the Berman Institute of Bioethics at Johns Hopkins University. He advised on how to allocate scarce hospital resources such as ventilators. He also authored a paper on Deception and Trust in Health Crises.
• Rowan is seeking ways to improve bipartisan dialogue about injustice. He appeared on a podcast on Uncertainty, Disunity, and Injustice. He is a founding board member of the International Dialogue Initiative. Its mission is to understand the psychological barriers to peacemaking, suggest interventions and promote dialogue.
• He is studying how African Americans, Native Americans, and immigrants from South and Central America are at greater risk of catching the coronavirus and dying than white Americans. He seeks to address racial injustice through his 20 years of volunteer work in the Kairos Prison Ministry and in the Street Reentry Program in Maryland. He helped with a podcast on Racial Trauma: A Dialogue on How We Can Heal.
• Rowan is examining educational opportunities for Pell Grants to help inmates learn in prison so they can adjust when reentering society, reduce recidivism, and improve public safety. He has taught in three universities (Northwestern, George Washington, and Southern California), and served on six boards of educational entities. He also has advised the president of the University of Maryland Global Campus, including on how to deal with COVID-19, resulting in the podcast Beyond Isolation.