Meet the 2022-2025 Board Leadership and Membership. Click here for information on how to get involved with the DRMC.

Leadership

President: Diana Pardue

Diana Pardue (New York, NY, United States) is serving her second term as the President of ICOM’s International Committee, Disaster Resilient Museums Committee (DRMC)., She is the Chief of the Museum Services Division for the Statue of Liberty NM and Ellis Island at the National Park Service (NPS). In her role at NPS, Diana is responsible for the museum and reference services program and staff as well as serving as a curatorial advisor for the cultural resources compliance program, including the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and compliance of Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act (P.L. 108-72). She has worked with the International Sites of Conscience and other international museums and organizations in the development and programing of migration museums.

Diana has been trained as a member of the NPS Museum Emergency Response Team (MERT) and has been part of numerous NPS museum emergency response teams since Hurricane Isabel in 2003 and a member of the FEMA museum emergency response teams for Hurricanes Katrina and Maria. She has been involved with ICOM DRMC since 2011 when it was a Standing Committee of ICOM and in the development of the current International Committee.

She is currently a member of ICOM’s Standing Committee for ICOM Define and former member of the Working Group on Sustainability. She served as a member of ICOM’s Executive Board for two terms, Co-Chair of ICOM-US National Committee and Chair of the International Committee of Architecture and Museum Techniques (ICAMT).

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Vice President: Ihor Poshyvailo

Ihor Poshyvailo (Kyiv, Ukraine) is serving his second term as ICOM DRMC (IC) Vice President. He is the general director of the National Memorial to the Heavenly Hundred Heroes and Revolution of Dignity Museum (Maidan Museum). He is cultural activist, ethnologist, museologist, cultural manager and art curator.

Ihor is ex-chairman of the Museum Council at the Ukrainian Ministry of Culture, and held the role of Vice President of the ICOM DRMC (2019-2022). He holds PhD in History, was a Fulbright Scholar at the Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage; an international fellow at the DeVos Institute of Arts Management at the Kennedy Center.

Ihor is the author of the award-winning book Phenomenology of Pottery (semiotic and ethnological aspects), 2000; as well as numerous articles on traditional art and culture, musification of conflicted and disputed history, cultural emergency management. He is a participant, lecturer and mentor of the international ICCROM/UNESCO/Smithsonian Institution training courses “First Aid to Cultural Heritage in Times of Crisis” (The Netherlands, 2015; US, 2016, Italy, 2019-2020), Lecturer to the Getty Institute (2015) and St Andrews University (2016).

When the large-scale Russian-Ukrainian began in 2022, Ihor became the initiator and coordinator of the Heritage Emergency Response Initiative (HERI) and a member of the National Council for Reconstruction of Ukraine from the War.

Secretary: Brian Daniels

Dr. Brian Daniels (Philadelphia, United States) is serving his second term as ICOM DRMC (IC) Secretary. Since 2008, Dr. Daniels has been Director of Research and Programs for the Penn Cultural Heritage Center at the University of Pennsylvania Museum where he has led local preservation initiatives, launched a multi-institutional consortium for cultural heritage research, and championed legislative reforms to the legal framework for international museum loans.

He has also advised other cultural organizations working in the sector, including Cultural Rescue Initiative at the Smithsonian Institution. He has taught at the University of Pennsylvania, Stanford University, Rutgers University, San Francisco State University, American University of Rome, and for the International Centre for the Study of the Preservation and Restoration of Cultural Property in Rome’s (ICCROM’s) First Aid for Culture course.

Between 2013 and 2020, Dr. Daniels co-directed the Safeguarding the Heritage of Syria and Iraq Project, which supported heritage professionals working to protect museums and archaeological sites in conflict zones. This initiative tested many of the best practices for the international support of community-led cultural initiatives in complex emergencies. Dr. Daniels is involved in several cultural heritage organizations in addition to ICOM as the Vice President for Cultural Heritage of the Archaeological Institute of America, and Vice President of the U.S. Committee of the Blue Shield.

Treasurer: Yuji Kurihara

Yuji Kurihara (Kyoto, Japan) is serving his second term as ICOM DRMC (IC) Treasurer. He has been the Vice-Director of Kyoto National Museum since 2016 and specializes in museum administration and cultural policy.

Yuji was appointed as a member of the former ICOM DRMC Standing Committee by the President of ICOM (2016-2022)  and he planned and managed the Annual Conference in Japan (2021). He was also Vice-Chair of ICOM-ASPAC (2016-2019) where he planned and managed the ASPAC Annual Conference in Kyushu (2018) and the ICOM General Conference in Kyoto (2019) as Chair of Steering Committee of ICOM Kyoto 2019 Organizing Committee. Yuji also held the important role as a Board Member of ICOM-JAPAN and as the Director of Japanese Association of Museums.

Yuji founded the National Task Force for the Japanese Cultural Heritage Disaster Risk Mitigation Network after the Great East Japan Earthquake in 2011. He also organized the International Expert Meeting “Cultural Heritage and Disaster Resilient Communities,” held within the framework of the Third UN World Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction (WCDRR) in 2015 in Tokyo and Sendai, Japan.

Members

Samuel Fernando Franco Arce

Samuel Fernando Franco Arce (La Antigua Guatemala, Guatemala) is a sound recording engineer and videographer, and has been a Cultural First Aider Director of Casa K’ojom, Cultural Rescue Center and Museum since 1987. Casa K’ojom is in Antigua, Guatemala and is dedicated to documentation, preservation, and dissemination of Intangible Cultural Heritage of the Maya communities of Guatemala, and cultures of the Americas, Africa and Asia related to the Maya. Archives include photographs, audio, and video recordings; the exhibit collection includes traditional musical instruments, masks, dance and ritual clothing, objects. Samuel has also been a Trainer-Consultant at the Cultural Rescue Center in Disaster Preparedness and Risk Management for Cultural Heritage in Central America and the Caribbean. 

In 2022, Samuel was a partner of the ICCROM Net Zero Project “Climate, Culture and Peace” 2022 and Conveyor of Blue Shield Guatemala National Committee 2013-2022. He was a member of the Steering Committee of the Caribbean Heritage Emergency Network (CHEN) 2018-2022, and a Partner of the Cultural Emergency Response (CER) Program of the Prince Claus Fund CER network (2018-2022). He was also a Board member of the Guatemala National Committee of the UNESCO program “Memory of the World” 2008-2022, and alumni, teacher, trainer, and consultant of ICCROM’s “SOIMA” course, aimed to safeguarding sound and image collections 2009-2022.

Samuel has also been a member of ICOM AVICOM, the International Committee of Audio Visual and New Technologies (2004-2022), was the President of ICOM Guatemala National Committee (2008-2013), Vice president of ICOM Guatemala National Committee (2005-2008), and President of ICOM LAC Regional Alliance (2016-2019). Samuel was also a member of the Steering Committee of the EULAC Museums Consortium (2016-2020), listed in the UNESCO roster for Culture in Emergencies (2018), and a Project Manager of the Swedish, African, Asia, Latin America Museums Project (2005-2008).

Vanessa Fraga Prol

Vanessa Fraga Prol (The Hague, South Holland, Netherlands) is the manager of the Cultural Emergency Response (CER), formerly a program at the Prince Claus Fund for Culture and Development in the Netherlands. The organization bases its activities in four pillars: 1. First-aid projects to damaged or threaten cultural heritage; 2. Training of experts in emergency response; 3. Development and coordination of regional hubs; 4. Advocacy for cultural heritage protection.

Vanessa worked as a project manager for fifteen years in the United Nations system. In 2013, she was part of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons which was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in recognition of its efforts to eliminate a category of weapons of mass destruction. She is a PRINCE2® certified project manager and holds a master’s degree in World Heritage and Management of Cultural Projects for Development from ITC-ILO in cooperation with Polytechnic and Università di Torino, Italy. She also holds a master’s degree in information sciences from Complutense University in Madrid, Spain.

Elizabeth Kirby

Elizabeth Kirby (Washington DC, United States) is the Senior Advisor for Programs and Partnerships of the Smithsonian Cultural Rescue Initiative (SCRI) and has worked at SCRI since 2017. Her professional interest lies in working with cultural heritage stewards and researchers to develop tools, opportunities, and pathways to communicate and implement their ideas. She works with SCRI staff on refining narratives for programs in research, heritage rescue, and training, is the liaison with SCRI partners which include Smithsonian units, foreign and domestic governments, external funders and NGOs, and helps raise awareness of the need for protection of heritage threatened by disaster and the solutions that meet that need through social media, events, and materials for the public and press.

Elizabeth joined the Smithsonian in 2012 as the Grants Development Specialist for the Consortia, an interdisciplinary program and research incubator that worked across the entire institution. Prior to that, she spent more than twenty years in higher education, holding different positions that fostered internal and external collaboration and program development. These included twelve years as the Director of the Office of Sponsored Programs at American University in Washington DC and positions in Advancement and Professional Education Programs.

She has been a co-instructor for four years of the Leadership Program for Cultural Heritage Stewards in Challenging Circumstances, a program developed by SCRI and Cultural Emergency Response of the Netherlands. Elizabeth holds an MA in Linguistics from American University and a BA in Asian Studies from the University of Florida.