EMSD’s Rudy Murillo Featured on ‘Discover Resilience’ Podcast 

Rudy Murillo, Vice President of the Emergency Management and Services Department (EMSD), was recently featured in an episode of “Discover Resilience,” a podcast that showcases resilience leaders and their work to serve their communities. 

During the half-hour conversation with podcast hosts Shay Bond and Casey Daghigh, Mr. Murillo discussed how he first got into emergency management as well as the efforts to improve resiliency across the NYCHA community. 

Born and raised in Queens, Mr. Murillo is a U.S. Marine Corps veteran who served in Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom. He previously worked as a watch commander with NYC Emergency Management before joining NYCHA’s former Office of Emergency Management (OEM) in 2018. In 2022, he was named Senior Director of the newly consolidated EMSD, which merged OEM with the former Emergency Services Department.  

As VP, Mr. Murillo currently oversees nearly 155 EMSD team members who coordinate wide-ranging strategies to manage emergencies and enhance the Authority’s resilience to large-scale incidents. 

“On a daily basis, it’s the conversation of having those procedures and protocols in place, and building out that framework so that we can better respond to emergencies,” Mr. Murillo said of the department’s approach to preparedness. 

Mr. Murillo noted that the Authority has to “work really well with all of our partners, including the local, state, and federal government” to address the various emergency response challenges for such a large population as NYCHA, often described as a “city within a city.”    

In the years since the department’s consolidation, Mr. Murillo said the EMSD team members have worked very hard to redefine their roles and responsibilities while managing multiple tasks, and he is equally proud of the advancements that NYCHA has made as an organization over the past decade. 

“We’ve made huge strides with our Transformation Plan, our federal monitorship, and the things we’ve done; it’s a stark difference from where we were 10 years ago to where we are today,” he told the podcast hosts. “Residents see the difference in how we respond to emergencies; they see that restoration times are quicker, they see things are happening faster, and that’s why we do this work.” 

Listen to the full conversation here.