Soraya Sutherlin is the Chief Executive Officer of EMSP and is certified emergency manager with 15 years in emergency management. Her experiences include currently serving the as the Disaster Management Area Coordinator for the Los Angeles County Operational Area C and Regional Emergency Alert and Warning Manager for Alert SouthBay, a regional integrated alert and warning program covering 15 cities in Southern California. She provides leadership, grant administration, training, planning, and coordination for disaster response for the ten cities in Los Angeles County that make up Area C.

Soraya’s previous experience includes serving as the Emergency Manager for the City of Torrance, California and as the Disaster Resource Center Manager for the University of California Los Angeles Health System. During these roles she was responsible for program administration, training, community outreach, response operations and became a technical specialist on refinery-related regulations. In 2010, she was a technical advisor for the secondary review board for the implementation of the Incident Command System (ICS) for hospitals.

In 2019, she was part of the team working with the California Department of Education and the Los Angeles County of Office of Education in rewriting the Safe School Compliance Guide for California Public Schools. She has done extensive work with school districts across the state as well as CSU campuses.

In January of 2020, she was as selected to serve as an instructor for the National Center for BioMedical Research and Training (NCBRT), one of the seven federal consortiums dedicated to develop and provide national training standards, to develop course materials for crisis communications for K-12 schools through Louisiana State University. 

In March, 2020, she was appointed to lead the South Bay Joint Information Center for the COVID-19 Pandemic and most recently, the Deputy Branch Director for the Joint Information Center for Super Bowl LVI in Inglewood, California. 

Soraya holds a Bachelor’s and Master’s degree in Public Administration from the California State University, Long Beach and is certified through the International Association of Emergency Managers.