Barry Radford
Huntsville, Ontario, Canada
Barry Radford is a communications consultant specializing in emergency management communications and a Canadian Red Cross Disaster Management volunteer leader.
As the owner and senior adviser for Barry Radford & Associates, Barry has worked with the Association of Fire Chiefs of Canada and Public Safety Canada, to advance crisis and emergency communications practices on the Partners towards Safer Communities(PTSC-Online) website.
In 2011, Barry coordinated the news media and social media section for the Huron Challenge/Trillium Resolve emergency exercise in October in southwestern Ontario. This event included all three levels of government, private-sector organizations, including Bruce Power, and approximately 50 non-governmental organizations participating in the exercise.
Since volunteering as a team lead for the Canadian Red Cross Disaster Management Unit in the Muskoka-Parry Sound area, he has piloted a community based website based on Red Cross community preparedness information and serves on the provincial social media team. Barry is a media spokesperson for CRC.
As a senior communications adviser for the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources, Barry developed communications strategies on a province-wide basis for natural resource based programs. He provided communications strategic planning for forest fire protection, flood evacuations, major fish and wildlife program initiatives including invasive species, utilizing traditional and social media tools.
In 2009, he initiated the MNRCentral account on Twitter, to serve the growing social media need for information of Ontario's forest fire and flood conditions, which now has over 7000 social media followers.
Barry served as provincial news media spokesperson on a wide variety of natural resources and emergency-based issues in a 38 year career with the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources.
He has been a guest lecturer on emergency communications and the use of social media in a crisis, at both the Canadian Emergency Management College, Ottawa and Ryerson University and Seneca College in Toronto.