Catherine Sanders is the Deputy Regional Administrator for Region 7, which is comprised of Iowa, Missouri, Kansas, and Nebraska and nine tribal nations. Previously, Ms. Sanders served as the Mitigation Division Director, which is where Ms. Sanders began her career at FEMA with Region 7 in April of 2020. During her tenue with Region 7, Ms. Sanders has led an effort to increase staff in the Division including the addition of a new branch to address the significance of and improve mitigation activities in disaster recovery efforts. Ms. Sanders has focused on building relationships with our stakeholders and partners to increase resiliency throughout Region 7.
Ms. Sanders comes to the Region by way of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE), Kansas City District and Northwest Division. Ms. Sanders started her career in the early 1990s with USACE as an environmental attorney working across a broad range of environmental issues. She most recently was a National Program Manager for the new Levee Safety Program Initiative leading the state outreach programs, the National Levee Database (NLD), and was a program advisor for the USACE Risk Management Center. In this role, Ms. Sanders managed a national program and team while establishing and implementing a new national program framework focusing on the USACE civil works mission.
Ms. Sanders holds a bachelor’s degree of Liberal Arts & Sciences and has a Juris Doctorate from the University of Kansas, Lawrence, Kansas. Ms. Sanders also holds a MS in Risk Analysis/Management from University of Notre Dame/Baltimore.