Mary Ellen Carroll is the Executive Director of the Department of Emergency Management. She oversees a department of 280 employees who are responsible for leading San Francisco in planning, preparedness, communications, response, and recovery for daily emergencies, large City-wide events and major disasters. Her responsibilities include the overall operations of San Francisco’s 9-1-1 center, Emergency Operations Center, and the City’s emergency public alert and warning systems.
Carroll has almost 25 years of experience in local public service with the last 15 in the City and County of San Francisco. She joined the City’s Department of Public Health in 2005, where she led planning and coordination efforts for San Francisco’s health systems. Carroll also spent several years working in the Controller's Office developing business continuity plans for key City services. While there, she developed citywide plans for state and federal cost recovery activities to ensure rapid recovery from disasters and reimbursement for disaster damages. Carroll also spent seven years as the Director of Emergency Planning and Security for the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission where she supervised all security and emergency management operations for the city’s water, power and sewer system infrastructure and staff.
Throughout her tenure in San Francisco, she has led numerous incident command activations, managed the City’s pilot policy on drone usage, wrote the initial iteration of the continuity plan for the City’s financial system, managed the response to the 2013 Rim Fire that resulted in almost $50 million in damage to San Francisco city assets, and has deployed in a mutual assistance role to regional disasters including several wildfires. She is a Certified Emergency Manager. She is also a surfer, backpacker, soccer player and mother.
Carroll holds a Bachelor’s Degree in International Studies from George Washington University and an Master’s Degree in Urban Studies from Virginia Tech.
