Disaster Recovery Journal Spring 2023

CAREER SPOTLIGHT

and it was clear we needed to get more proactive in our planning and approach. Our traditional emergency response plans weren’t going to cut it for business opera tions and technology downtimes any longer (nor should they), so I started put ting operational plans together (it wasn’t until later I realized these were technically disaster recovery plans). From this point forward, I recognized my need to learn more about business continuity and started the groundwork to build a robust program. Tell us about some of the challenges you have encountered in your career. COVID-19 changed the way many of us work and view our criticalities in BC. Pre-COVID-19, the biggest thing that kept me up at night was concern over how we would relocate thousands of workers to different sites, or home if a building became unusable. COVID-19 forced us to adapt overnight to situations we previ ously considered “worst-case scenarios.” I hold a dual role where I am involved in incident response, so for me, COVID 19 meant I put all BC work on hold and shifted into a command center role for the 840 days our command center was open for COVID-19 response. During those 840 days, I: n Redesigned in-hospital morgue space to increase capacity and identified external morgue overflow spaces within the community. n Matched clinical volunteers to our highest-need units during the height of hospital surge. n Operationalized and helped lead two mass vaccination clinics (one of which did a whopping 12,500 vaccines in a single day). n Lead weekly meetings with participants from other Michigan hospitals and state representatives to gain understanding of the pandemic situation, response, and better support one another. Many of these things were not covered in our pandemic plans, and as a health care organization, we were often tweaking urgent processes as we were implementing

Career Spotlight: Chelsea Selbig By DAVID HALFORD T ell us about yourself – your name, company, title, and responsibilities? I’m Chelsea Selbig, a senior business con tinuity specialist for Corewell Health (previ ously Spectrum Health) in Michigan. Within my How did you get into the business continuity industry? I got into the business continuity indus try by way of emergency preparedness and response. As an undergraduate college stu dent, I took a job as a third-shift 911 dis patcher. After graduating, I moved to Vail, Colo., where I held a few different entry level positions before landing in safety

and facilities compliance, a position which married my need for a little adren aline with my desire to help others in healthcare. After finishing a mas ter’s degree and relocat ing back to Michigan, it took a few years to get back into a highly cov eted, yet rarely vacant emergency preparedness position in healthcare. Yet

role in corporate business continuity (BC), I specifi cally develop and drive our BC strategy, create plans which impact all divisions of our health care system and our health plan, and coordi nate executive response and sponsorship for the program. I also take an

Chelsea Selbig

on-call incident commander role for the whole system (22 hospitals, more than 300 outpatient facilities, and a 1.2 million member health plan) and am involved in emergency incident response.

from there, I really hit the ground running and quickly immersed myself back to the organized chaos of response. However, it seemed like I was continually responding to eerily similar technological incidents,

42 DISASTER RECOVERY JOURNAL | SPRING 2023