Jeff Morgan
Author
Jeff Morgan is the President & CEO of Aviem International, Inc. and Chairman & Co-founder of the Family Assistance Education & Research Foundation, Inc. (also known just as the Family Assistance Foundation). Both Aviem and the Foundation work with business and industry around the world to help create effective crisis management and emergency response plans and to provide crucial support to clients when crisis and other traumatic events happen.
Jeff has been involved in emergency management for 25 years and has responded to disasters and other traumatic events all over the world.
Jeff grew up in Atlanta, Georgia. As an aviation enthusiast at an early age, Jeff dreamed of flying and living in Atlanta, one day working for Delta Air Lines. Jeff soloed a Cessna 150 at age 16 and obtained private and later commercial pilot’s license. Jeff also started flying hot air balloons in 1976 and flew balloons for over thirty years.
After majoring in Aviation and Business Administration at Georgia State University, Jeff joined Delta Air Lines in 1979, starting at what was then known as the “Jet Base” and over the course of 21 years worked different areas of increasing responsibility around the Delta General Offices in Atlanta.
In the early nineties, Jeff was a project manager in Flight Operations and overseeing various ongoing projects. One of those projects involved emergency response procedures to be used in the event of an aircraft accident involving Delta aircraft.
The project quickly expanded into a corporate-wide effort and resulted in the creation of the first full-time, dedicated emergency management office in 1996. The first such office in the airline industry. In parallel with the development of emergency management office, Jeff assisted with the formation of the first Delta family assistance team (now known as the Care Team).
Unfortunately, Jeff had to respond to several fatal accidents during this time involving Delta flights and Delta partner airlines ASA, Comair and Swissair. The response to Swissair Flight 111, which crashed off the coast of Nova Scotia on September 2, 1998, was seen as the benchmark for how partner airlines should respond to an aviation disaster. This disaster occurred less than two years after the passage of the U.S. Aviation Disaster Family Assistance Act of 1996.
As a result of the new requirements of the Family Assistance Act and the success of the Swissair Flight 111 response, many airlines approached Jeff for help in developing their emergency preparedness plans. So, Jeff created Aviem International, Inc. in 1999 and left Delta soon after that to help companies full-time with their emergency preparedness.
In 2000, Jeff co-founded the Family Assistance Foundation with Carolyn V. Coarsey, Ph.D. Jeff and Carolyn created the Foundation to help empower people following tragedies by support business and industry responses to crisis and disaster.
Jeff is President and CEO of Aviem International and Chairman and co-founder of the Family Assistance Foundation and works with companies around the world in helping to improve their preparedness and ability to respond effectively to a crisis.