Joseph Pfeifer

Joseph Pfeifer retired from the New York City Fire Department in 2018 as an assistant chief and the founding director of FDNY’s Center for Terrorism and Disaster Preparedness. During his thirty-seven-year career, he commanded some of the most significant emergencies in New York City’s history, including the World Trade Center attacks on September 11, 2001, the Superstorm Sandy fire in 2012, and the Ebola crisis in 2014. Pfeifer is currently a senior fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School and the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point, and the director for crisis leadership at the National Center for Disaster Preparedness at Columbia University. He holds master’s degrees from the Harvard Kennedy School, the Naval Postgraduate School, and the Immaculate Conception seminary. Joe lives in New York with his wife, Ginny.