Resilience is Local.

At Anderson Resilience Advisors (ARA), we don’t believe in "off-the-shelf" disaster plans. We believe that true resilience is grown from the ground up, tailored to the specific culture, capacity, and risks of the communities we serve.

ARA was born out of a simple observation: small and medium-sized organizations are often the most vulnerable to disasters, yet they are frequently handed planning "templates" designed for major metropolitan centers. These templates often fail because they don’t account for the unique social and economic networks that hold smaller communities together.

Dr. Deserai Anderson

ARA was founded and is led by Dr. Deserai Anderson, an internationally recognized scholar and practitioner specializing in disaster preparedness, resilience planning, and organizational decision-making under uncertainty.

  • The Academic Leader: She is an award-winning Professor in the School of Public Affairs at the University of Colorado Denver and is the Co-Director of the Center for Community Safety and Resilience.

  • The Researcher: Her work, supported by the National Science Foundation and other agencies, focuses on how communities and organizations plan for, respond to, and recover from disasters—particularly in settings with limited resources and complex risks.

  • The Practitioner: She brings decades of experience working directly with local governments, nonprofits, and community partners. She understands that a plan is only good if people know how to use it, so she focuses on usable documents and confident decision-making.

Dr. Anderson founded ARA to provide local governments and community organizations access to the same level of expertise usually reserved for big cities—delivered with the personal attention a smaller organization deserves.

Jennifer Gruber Tanaka, Esq.

Special Districts Advisor

Jennifer Gruber Tanaka brings over two decades of legal and legislative expertise specialized in Colorado’s special districts. As ARA's Special Districts Advisor, she provides expertise and insight into the distinct needs of Special Districts.

Jennifer’s career is defined by her deep commitment to special district governance and policy. She served as a Shareholder at White Bear Ankele Tanaka & Waldron, P.C. for 14 years and was a 2023 Gubernatorial Appointee to the Metropolitan District Homeowners Rights Task Force. Her legislative leadership includes serving as Chair of the Legislative Committee for the Metro District Education Coalition and as a member of the Special District Association of Colorado Legislative Committee.

Jennifer earned her Juris Doctor from the University of Denver, Sturm College of Law. Her role as advisor reinforces ARA’s mission to provide small and medium-sized organizations with actionable, research-to-practice expertise.