Alex Rohlwing

Disaster Recovery Specialist

Alex Rohlwing is a disaster recovery and conflict resolution professional whose work and academics focus on coordination between people and organizations in disaster response, gender in humanitarian aid and conflicts, and experiential education. He has worked domestically with the Alachua County Health Department’s Medical Reserve Corps and Health Department Emergency Planner in Florida, as well as internationally, supporting medical aid and development efforts in Haiti and Nicaragua. 

For the past seven years, he has worked with the Consortium for Humanitarian Service and Education (CHSE), planning and directing multi-day, simulation-based field training exercises (FTXs) to train the next generation of humanitarian and disaster response professionals. His talents extend beyond the logistics and operations of these events, he has trained dozens of staff in educational techniques, safety, hazard mitigation in high-liability training, and creating evidence-based experiential education. Alex wrangles dozens of subject matter experts, a diverse and experienced 35-person staff, over 100 volunteers, and multiple organizations and institutions to direct CHSE’s FTX Atlantic Hope, an international humanitarian training. To produce this training, he coordinates over half a million dollars in material and human resources during a year of planning to create four days of intense, full-immersion, simulation-based training that puts up to 50 participants through the experience of responding to an international disaster as an INGO staff.

Alex has also designed and presented more traditional educational seminars on humanitarian negotiation, workplace dispute resolution, disaster field triage, and disaster field medicine. As an educator, his philosophy is this: “There is no learning without experience, and every experience is an opportunity to learn. The best teachers don’t ‘teach’—they facilitate; they help those around them draw education out of any environment in which they find themselves, any challenge they face, and build their capacity to reflect on those experiences, failures, and triumphs throughout their lives.”

In addition to his disaster response, conflict resolution, and teaching/training expertise, Alex is an experienced EMT-Paramedic and a certified mediator. He has an MA in Conflict Resolution from Georgetown University and a BA in Cultural Anthropology from the University of Florida.