Workshop Purpose

This hands-on lab prepares crisis communications and continuity teams to use generative AI effectively and responsibly in high-pressure, time-sensitive situations. Participants will explore practical ways to apply AI to tasks such as rapidly synthesizing information, drafting and refining communications, identifying emerging issues, supporting decision-making, and maintaining continuity of operations when time and resources are limited. The session emphasizes how to balance the speed and capabilities of generative AI with the need for accuracy, appropriate governance, traceability, privacy, security, and human accountability. Through realistic, scenario-based exercises, participants will practice validating AI-generated content, identifying potential errors and risks, documenting how AI was used, protecting sensitive information, and applying human judgment before information is released or decisions are made. By the end of the lab, participants will have a practical framework for incorporating generative AI into crisis response workflows while maintaining organizational standards, public trust, and clear lines of human responsibility.

What You Will Learn

By the end of this lab, you will deploy AI in a live crisis without sacrificing accuracy or governance.

1. Apply generative AI to draft, adapt, and approve crisis messages.
2. Engineer prompts for role, context, audience, and output format.
3. Detect and mitigate hallucination, privacy, legal, and copyright risk.
4. Tailor communications to executives, boards, customers, and media.
5. Run the exercise injects and score outputs against the rubric.

participant requirements




Your Instructors

Nancy Holloway-White Nancy Holloway-White is the past president of DRI Canada and currently sits on the Board of Directors, Nancy has extensive business continuity and risk experience and is the Director, Process Effectiveness with a major financial institution in Toronto.

Suzanne Bernier Suzanne is an award-winning crisis and resilience consultant, speaker, educator, and author with nearly 30 years of experience helping governments, communities, and organizations prepare for, respond to, and recover from major disasters worldwide.
 
A former journalist and government communications advisor, she entered emergency management in 1997 as Ontario’s first female uniformed Emergency Management Ontario (EMO) field officer. Since then, she has contributed to responses and recovery efforts for major events including the 1998 Ice Storm, the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Hurricane Katrina, the 2003 Northeast blackout, the Fort McMurray wildfire, and the COVID-19 pandemic.
 
In 2016, Suzanne was named North America’s Continuity & Resilience Consultant of the Year by the Business Continuity Institute and later spoke at The White House during FEMA’s preparedness awards ceremony. Her international work includes designing and facilitating the first pandemic tabletop exercise and action plan for the United Nations Headquarters in New York.
 
A Certified Business Continuity Professional (CBCP) since 2004, Suzanne teaches for DRI International and DRI Canada and serves as Vice President of the Resilience Information Exchange (RIE) Toronto Chapter. She is also the author of Disaster Heroes, which highlights extraordinary acts of courage during major world events.

Garth Tucker Garth Tucker is an award-winning resilience management professional with more than 25 years of experience. Member, from 2018 until 2024, of the board of directors for the Disaster Recovery Institute (DRI) Canada and currently, editor-in-chief of True North Resilience magazine.