David Wagner, President & Chief Executive Officer, Everbridge
In this interview David Wagner, President & Chief Executive Officer at Everbridge answers a couple of questions on Everbridge’s path for climate adaptation. Everbridge will also partake in this year’s World Climate Summit 2023, as Summit Partner.
Everbridge empowers organisational resilience with the world’s leading critical event management platform, and we are committed to supporting climate adaptation strategies for both governments and enterprises. Our mission is to help organisations keep people safe and businesses running during critical events.
Everbridge is proud of its partnership with the World Climate Foundation. Attending the World Climate Summits, the investment COP, has been crucial for Everbridge in the last three years as those gatherings provide a unique platform to engage with global leaders, policymakers, industry experts and business leaders working towards sustainable solutions. These events offer an unparalleled opportunity to contribute our expertise in critical event management to discussions on climate resilience, adaptation, and emergency response. By participating, Everbridge stays at the forefront of evolving climate agendas, ensuring our solutions align with the latest environmental goals.
David Wagner, President & Chief Executive Officer, Everbridge
1.Understanding Climate Challenges
How do you perceive the current climate challenges affecting both governments and enterprises globally? We recognize that climate challenges, including extreme weather events, wildfires, floods, and the broader impacts of climate change, pose significant threats to public safety, infrastructure, and business continuity. In 2023, as of the beginning of October, the United States has experienced 24 confirmed climate disaster events exceeding $1 billion each, causing 373 deaths and significant economic effects in the areas impacted1. To effectively face these challenges, society requires comprehensive and proactive adaptation and response strategies.
In your view, how has the landscape of climate-related events evolved in recent years? Climate-related events have become more frequent and severe, with a far-reaching impact on communities and businesses. As climate change accelerates, it is evident that governments and enterprises must adapt to a new reality of increased risk. Governments are now globally investing in proactive measures such as early warning systems, as demonstrated by the launch of the Early Warnings for All Initiative at COP 27 in Egypt, while also posing new regulations for businesses. Indeed, enterprises are investing in new ESG strategies both to mitigate their impact on climate and comply with new regulations, such as the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) in Europe, while developing new plans to address climate-related events for their business operations.
2.Everbridge's Role in Climate Adaptation:
Can you elaborate on how Everbridge supports governments in their climate adaptation strategies? Serving over 25 countries globally with its Public Warning System, Everbridge provides governments with a population alerting platform that enables real-time situational awareness, efficient communication, and response coordination during emergencies, including climate-related incidents. This empowers governments, from the United Kingdom to Trinidad and Tobago, to protect their citizens and manage resources more effectively.
An example of how we deliver our solutions to enhance climate adaptation for the government came from India. After crises such as massive floods in 2021, the State of Maharashtra in India undertook an initiative to implement an Incident Planning and Response System that would bring together stakeholders and support agencies including Police, Fire, Public Works, and Health under one platform, and to provide one common operating picture to respond to any disaster in a unified manner. The State partnered with Everbridge to create a comprehensive incident management platform that puts their plans into action, tracks activities, mobilizes resources, and enables decision support.
How does Everbridge contribute to climate resilience for enterprises and businesses? We know that organisations failing to prioritize climate resilience and address the environmental, social, and governance (ESG) agenda will find themselves impacted by significant operational disruptions. Corporate boards all over the world are aware that customers are requiring better ESG and climate adaptation policies. Thus, governance will become an increasingly important factor in the private sector strategy toward climate change.
Everbridge's platform offers businesses the ability to prepare, assess, and respond to climate risks in real-time. By leveraging data and communication tools, we help enterprises make informed decisions, protect their employees, and safeguard their operations. We noticed that by utilizing a comprehensive critical event management (CEM) solution that allows the composite organisation to maintain business operations and functions leading up to and during a critical event, enterprises gain up to 3 million USD in efficiency gains in three years (Forrester, 2023).
3.Technology and Innovation:
What specific technological solutions does Everbridge offer to address climate-related risks?
Most of our solutions can be tailored to address climate-related events. Everbridge offers a wide range of technological solutions, including real-time monitoring, incident communication, IoT integration, and data analytics. These tools help organisations assess climate risks, initiate timely responses, and mitigate the impact of climate-related events. Solutions such as Everbridge 360 provide organisations with the most comprehensive and unified interface to manage critical events across one single platform so you can know earlier, respond faster, and improve continuously.
In what ways does Everbridge leverage data and analytics to enhance climate risk assessments?
Everbridge provides organisations with 24x7x365 global insights into threats, including weather patterns, environmental conditions, and other potential risks. We integrate with more than 20,000 trustworthy external data sources to which we apply our machine learning and Artificial Intelligence. Then, we elaborate that information with a threat analyst team to provide timely, accurate, actionable intelligence for our customers. This data allows us to make timely, informed, risk-based decisions to enhance climate resilience and mitigate the impact of critical weather events.
4.Collaboration and Partnerships
How does Everbridge collaborate with governments and other stakeholders to enhance climate resilience?
Everbridge collaborates with governments, NGOs, academia, and industry partners to enhance climate resilience. Over the last few years, we launched partnerships with UN institutions such as the ITU and UNDRR ARISE while fostering synergies with academia, as in the case of our partnership with University College London Warning Research Center. These collaborations involve sharing best practices, integrating data sources, and developing joint solutions to foster innovation for climate adaptation strategies.
Can you share examples of successful partnerships that have significantly contributed to climate adaptation efforts?
Through our participation in the European Horizon 2020 project Engage, funded by the European Union, we were able to create an AI-powered chatbot that will integrate our public warning systems, making it more effective and efficient in supporting the authorities during emergencies. Additionally, Everbridge has worked closely with government agencies and private sector organisations to enhance climate resilience. For example, our partnerships with meteorological agencies have enabled us to provide more accurate and timely weather-related alerts, helping communities prepare for severe weather events.
5.Future Outlook
Looking ahead, what role do you see Everbridge playing in the evolving landscape of climate adaptation?
We are committed to continually innovating and expanding our solutions to meet the evolving challenges posed by climate change. We invest in AI and we partner with many different climate stakeholders. Because of the unique capabilities we deliver to make organisations resilient, we envision a future where our platform plays a central role in helping governments and businesses adapt to and mitigate the impact of climate-related events.
Conclusion
Any final thoughts or messages you'd like to convey regarding Everbridge's commitment to climate adaptation?
Unfortunately, the sole focus on climate mitigation will not solve the climate crisis. It is now time to also invest in making society at large climate resilient “by developing capacities to manage and implement cost-effective strategies for disaster risk reduction and planning, enabling construction and maintenance of climate and disaster shock resilient,” as highlighted by the International Monetary Fund at the end of the last Annual Meeting held in Marrakech, Morocco, in October (IMF, 2023).
For this reason, we want to emphasize our unwavering commitment to support climate adaptation efforts. Our customers are placing increasing emphasis on climate change, on how the increased number of extreme weather events is damaging their ability to keep people safe and their businesses running. With our technology, we are supporting them, both in the public and private sector, in mitigating their impact on the environment by advancing their ability to plan for and respond to critical weather events. Everbridge is dedicated to supporting our customers and our communities in this work. Together, we can work toward a safer and more sustainable future.
About Everbridge
Everbridge Inc. (NASDAQ: EVBG) is a global company with a mission to Keep People Safe and Organizations Running™. They help companies and public sector authorities anticipate, respond, and adapt to risk by centralizing business intelligence, communications, and crisis management. Their Critical Event Management (CEM) software solutions are trusted by over 6,200 customers across 76 countries, and over 21 national disaster prevention authorities use the Everbridge Public Warning Center to alert their populations.
Everbridge is proud to enable resilience and reduced cost of risk financing and insurance via demonstrated best practices in CEM. In addition to direct customer sales, Everbridge goes to market via qualified partners to broaden our distribution and reach. Through market-leading solutions and the Everbridge Partner Program, we can grow our mutual business together and keep people safe.
Learn more: https://www.everbridge.com/
About the Author
David (Dave) Wagner is President & Chief Executive Officer of Everbridge (NASDAQ: EVBG). Everbridge keeps people safe and organisations running by digitizing organisational resilience.Dave has over 30 years of leadership experience and a record of successfully leading, growing and transforming B2B SaaS software companies; leading teams to transform products and optimize go-to-market execution; building customer success and mission-driven employee cultures; and delivering shareholder value.Prior to Everbridge Dave served as President and Chief Executive Officer of Zix, a leading provider of email encryption, threat protection and email archiving for businesses around the world.
Dave led Zix’s transformation from a premise-based email encryption company to a cloud-based provider, overseeing the integration of multiple products and platforms. During this period, Zixincreased its Annual Recurring Revenues, EBITDA and resulting enterprise value, each by over 400%.Before Zix, Dave served as the President of Entrust Datacard, a Thoma Bravo portfolio company, and held the roles of Chief Financial Officer, Controller and Treasurer of Entrust Inc. He has served in finance leadership roles at Nortel Networks and Raytheon.