The Leading in a Crisis Podcast

Hosted by Tom Mueller

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Jun 2026

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About the show

Interviews, stories and lessons learned from experienced crisis leaders. Email the show at Tom@leadinginacrisis.com. Being an effective leader in a corporate or public crisis situation requires knowledge, tenacity, and influencing skills. Unfortunately, most of us don't get much training or real experience dealing with crisis situations. On this podcast, we will talk with people who have lived through major crisis events and we will tap their experience and stories from the front lines of crisis management. Your host, Tom Mueller, is a veteran crisis manager and trainer with more than 30 years in the corporate communications and crisis fields. Tom currently works as an executive coach and crisis trainer with WPNT Communications, and as a contract public information officer and trainer through his personal company, Tom Mueller Communications LLC. Your co-host, Marc Mullen, has over 20 years of experience as a communication strategist. He provides subject matter expertise in a number of communication specializations, including crisis communication plan development, response and recovery communications, emergency notifications and communications, organizational reviews, and after-action reports. He blogs at Blog | Marc Mullen Our goal is to help you grow your knowledge and awareness so you can be better prepared to lead should a major crisis threaten your organization. Music credit: Special thanks to Nick Longoria from Austin, Texas for creating the theme music for the podcast. #crisis #crisismanagement #crisiscomms #crisiscommunications #BusinessContinuity #LeadingThroughCrisis #CrisisResponse

Listen to episodes

60 recent

June 14, 2026Episode 8432 min

EP84 Using AI to prepare for crisis, with Clearline Crisis

Send us Fan MailMost companies don’t fail a crisis because they lack smart people. They fail because the “plan” is a dusty document, the spokesperson is untested, and the first real coordination happens at 11:30 on a Sunday night. We sit down with Mitch Cohen, founder of ClearLine Crisis and a 25-year crisis communications veteran, to talk about what it takes to build real readiness before reputational risk turns into an enterprise-threatening event.We get specific about AI in crisis management: where it genuinely helps and where it can create dangerous false certainty. Mitch explains how ClearLine tackles the problem with two guardrail layers, a crisis communications doctrine that drives better decisions and a language layer designed to avoid generic AI voice. From there, we walk through how scenario planning questionnaires generate editable crisis playbooks across dozens of crisis types, and how audio-based spokesperson training can pressure test key messages with increasingly aggressive questions.Reach ClearLinecrisis at clearlinecrisis.comSupport the showWe'd love to hear from you. Email the show at Tom@leadinginacrisis.com.

June 7, 2026Episode 8318 min

EP83 Volunteer Turns Chaos Into Clarity With A Community Crisis Website

Send us Fan MailFifty thousand people evacuate, rumors fly, and the search for the latest information becomes frantic. During the Memorial Day weekend chemical incident in Orange County, California, residents in Garden Grove and Anaheim needed more than breaking news; they needed clear, trusted, practical directions they could use immediately. Enter Victor Tran, a 27-year-old web designer and software engineer who voluntarily created a crisis website to aggregate emergency information and updates. Through some busy and sleepless nights, Victor built it into a real-time resource hub for the community, including translations into seven languages, at ggspill.com. We unpack the crisis communications problem that shows up in almost every emergency: too many sources, too little time, and a constant drip of misinformation. Victor walks through how he vetted resources, organized essentials like food, transportation, housing, mutual aid, and services, and designed the site to reduce mental load for people who were displaced and exhausted. We also dig into how he pulled official updates from the Orange County Fire Authority into a single place so residents could keep situational awareness without chasing posts across platforms. Find Victor Tran on LinkedIn, or at his development site: https://victortran.dev/ #gknaerospace #orangecounty #ofca #gardengrove #crisiscommunications #crisismanagementSupport the showWe'd love to hear from you. Email the show at Tom@leadinginacrisis.com.

June 2, 2026Episode 8230 min

EP82 A Journalist's View - high stakes chemical leak and evacuation in Orange County, CA

Send us Fan MailOn this episode, we continue our review of the high-stakes incident and evacuation in Orange County, CA over the Memorial Day holiday weekend. Some 50,000 residents were forced to flee their homes as a runaway thermal reaction built pressure and risk inside a local manufacturing facility.We're joined by journalist Alexandra Datig, who covers news issues in Southern California, and also runs her own news site, FrontPageIndex.com. Alex was on the scene as emergency responders worked to stop the runaway reaction taking place in a chemical storage tank located not far from the famed vacation destination of Disneyland. How well did emergency managers communicate the threats and requested evacuations to a population of 50,000 people? Alex walks us through her assessment of the communications response as she saw it over the course of six days.We take a detailed look at the real communications choices that helped keep people calm while responders worked through uncertainty, rising temperatures, and fears of a potential explosion tied to methyl methacrylate (MMA). Several community meetings were held during the incident. Did the responsible company, GKN Aerospace, participate in those meetings with local residents? Should they? We discuss those issues, along with the threats and upsides, of participating in a community meeting.You can reach Alex Datig at FrontPageIndex.com. #orangecounty #ocfa #emergencymanagement #crisiscommunication #gardengrove Support the showWe'd love to hear from you. Email the show at Tom@leadinginacrisis.com.

May 30, 2026Episode 8128 min

EP81 Hot take: Orange County chemical incident - crisis communications review

Send us Fan MailA storage tank starts heating up, pressure builds, and suddenly Orange County is staring down a worst-case scenario: a thermal runaway that could end in a catastrophic explosion or a dangerous vapor release. Over Memorial Day weekend, that risk forces rapidly changing evacuation decisions, including a massive evacuation affecting about 50,000 people in Garden Grove and Anaheim. We dig into the pieces that worked: frequent, casually shot video updates from incident command that let people see empathy and competence, clear plain-language explanations of what’s at stake, and strong public health framing from Orange County’s health officer, Dr. Regina Chinsio Kwong (Dr. CK), on what exposure could do and why the evacuation zone matters. We also look at smart distribution choices, like making “critical incident updates” easy to spot on social feeds, plus the later push to add multilingual subtitles, including Spanish and Vietnamese, using AI-assisted translation. Then we get into the complicated parts crisis leaders have to own. The company involved, GKN Aerospace, stays mostly invisible until late written statements, raising real questions about trust, accountability, and timing. A volunteer-built website becomes the best one-stop information hub, exposing the risks of not launching a unified command site quickly. And as the incident stretches on, lawsuits and town halls show up right on schedule, bringing emotion, politics, and safety concerns into the response environment. If you lead in emergency management, public information, or corporate crisis response, this is a practical playbook you can borrow from. Subscribe, share this with someone who handles high-stakes comms, and leave a review with your biggest takeaway.Resources mentioned in the podcast:ggcity.org/emergency - Garden Grove city emergency pagesggspill.com - Volunteer information website that provided valuable information#orangecounty #gknaerospace #crisiscommunications #emergencymanagement #emergencyresponse Support the showWe'd love to hear from you. Email the show at Tom@leadinginacrisis.com.

May 23, 2026Episode 8040 min

EP80 Dude! Where's my stuff? Managing Iran war supply chain disruptions

Send us Fan MailAs impacts from the war with Iran become more evident around the world, and more serious, we dive into how one highly experienced supply chain manager is managing the disruption. Hint, planning is key, but existing relationships (or lack thereof) with suppliers can play a significant role in your response.Jeff Zudock, a veteran of ExxonMobil and an expert in supply chain management and troubleshooting, shares his insight into how companies are handling this emerging crisis. More product shortages are likely in the coming months as material storage is drawn down and not replenished. What can you do about it? Jeff offers up his perspective for VPs and senior managers working these critical issues.We talk about why the Iran conflict is not just an “oil story,” but a transportation and capacity story, where vessels get trapped, lead times stretch, and costs surge even when material still exists somewhere in the world. Jeff explains how modern global supply chains depend on invisible feedstocks like methanol and other industrial chemicals, and why some specialized fuel additives are made by only a handful of producers across limited regions. From there, we zoom out to the management systems behind the scenes: just-in-time inventory, minimal safety stock, and the harsh math of rebalancing supply across oceans, rail, and truck when ships and containers are out of position. Jeff shares a practical crisis management approach for procurement leaders: map your gaps, set trigger points, segment customers, communicate early and often with suppliers, and empower the people closest to the work to run tactical solutions while leadership steers the longer-term plan.If you want a clearer view of supply chain risk, procurement strategy, and business continuity planning under real pressure, listen now. Subscribe, share this with a colleague, and leave a review: what part of your supply chain would break first?Reach Jeff Zudock on LinkedIn here.#supplychain #iranwar #crisismanagement #procurementSupport the showWe'd love to hear from you. Email the show at Tom@leadinginacrisis.com.

May 14, 202632 min

Supply chain disruption: leadership insights from XOM alum Jeff Zudock

Send us Fan MailSupply chain disruptions, like those we're seeing now around energy supplies from the Persian Gulf, can cause long-term business and profitability impacts. Leadership skills in those tense situations can make or break a company's response to these unforeseen events. Jeff Zudock, a 35-year veteran of ExxonMobil and an expert in commercial and supply chain management, joins us to share his insights around managing a major supply disruption. Jeff shares with us details of a major incident that he worked at Exxon and the cascading series of challenges that leadership faced navigating the unexpected outage. The stakes are high when raw materials go in short supply, and quick action is needed to avert losses that can quickly reach millions of dollars per day if manufacturing facilities are idled owing to a kink in the supply chain. You'll hear Jeff discuss leadership principles that help guide him when leading a crisis team, and he also offers insight into best practices to avoid supply chain disruptions.This episode originally aired in November 2023.#supplychain #supplychaincrisis #crisis #crisiscommunicationsSupport the showWe'd love to hear from you. Email the show at Tom@leadinginacrisis.com.

May 2, 2026Episode 7934 min

EP79 The Great Kitkat Heist - using memes in a crisis, with Natalee Gibson

Send us Fan MailTwelve tons of Kit Kat bars get stolen, and suddenly the internet is doing what it does best: turning a real-world incident into a meme factory. We dig into why that kind of viral corporate humor can be a smart PR play in the right context, and why it can also become reputation roulette when the facts change. I’m joined by Natalie Gibson, founder and CEO of Songue PR, to talk about where the “fun” ends, how to think about risk, and what crisis communication looks like when everyone online is a commentator.From the Kit Kat tracker to brand pile-ons, we look at how social media narratives form in minutes and how quickly a light story can turn serious. We also talk about a bigger concern: memes can desensitize audiences, especially when the same formats get used around geopolitics and violent events. That shift matters for crisis management, because tone is no longer just a creative choice, it’s part of how people process harm, responsibility, and trust.We then jump into the burger wars and the surprising power of one CEO bite on camera. Natalie shares how to define leadership persona, how to coach executives for viral moments, and when a follow-up response helps versus when it makes things worse. Finally, we get practical about social listening and media monitoring across platforms, why no single tool is enough, and how rumor control and misinformation response have become central to modern crisis communications. Reach Natalee Gibson at Songuepr.com Support the showWe'd love to hear from you. Email the show at Tom@leadinginacrisis.com.

April 28, 2026Episode 7827 min

EP78 Crisis Comms at NASA, part 4: Crisis Exercises, the media landscape and deepfakes

Send us Fan MailA deepfake can hit your audience before your first internal briefing ends and the most “engaging” version of events is often the least true. That’s the reality we dig into with James Hartsfield, former director of communications at NASA’s Johnson Space Center, as we unpack what it takes to lead crisis communications in a changing media environment.We start with the foundation: practice. James explains why crisis exercises work best when communicators learn the system itself, not just the talking points, and why leadership has to show up side by side in simulations. He shares a memorable onboarding story that captures the standard at NASA: if you want to communicate under pressure, you need enough technical understanding to earn respect, stay coherent, and translate complexity into simple, accurate language.From there we get into what audiences actually respond to. People care about people, and crisis communication has to acknowledge human impact first, then clearly explain what happened and what you’re doing next. James also offers a hard-earned lens on post-crisis reviews: hindsight is a powerful teacher, but it’s a terrible yardstick for judging decisions made in real time.Then we take on the modern media landscape: fewer specialist reporters, less incentive for objectivity, and more profit in picking sides. Add social platforms, AI misinformation, and deepfake videos, and the job becomes equal parts truth-telling and distribution strategy. We close with the leadership side of readiness: how to hire communications staff, what traits matter most, and how NASA scales up communications teams during a major crisis by pulling trained people from across the agency.If you found this helpful, subscribe, share it with someone who owns crisis response at your organization, and leave a review with the one insight you’re taking into your next drill.Support the showWe'd love to hear from you. Email the show at Tom@leadinginacrisis.com.

April 22, 2026Episode 7724 min

EP77 Crisis Comms at NASA, part 3: The Columbia response and investigation

Send us Fan MailA shuttle breaks apart on re-entry, the world demands answers, and the people closest to the story have to decide what transparency actually looks like when an investigation is just getting started. We pick back up with James Hartsfield, former director of communications for NASA’s Johnson Space Center, to talk through what happened after Columbia’s first, intense week of press briefings and why it was essential for the Columbia Accident Investigation Board to take the communications lead. That handoff isn’t just process, it’s credibility, and it’s a reminder that you can’t invent trust in the middle of a crisis.We also get into the messier modern reality: crisis communications with partners. International cooperation on the ISS set the stage for commercial spaceflight, where companies have proprietary constraints but NASA still owes the public clear, honest answers when astronauts are involved. Using the Boeing Starliner situation as a lens, we break down how “stranded crew” became a headline, why that framing can be misleading, and how leaders can correct the record without fanning the flames. If you care about crisis leadership, reputation management, and clear communication under pressure, this conversation delivers hard-earned lessons you can use anywhere.Subscribe, share this with someone who leads in high-stakes moments, and leave a review so more people can find the show. #NASA #spaceflight #spacex #crisiscomms #emergencymanagementSupport the showWe'd love to hear from you. Email the show at Tom@leadinginacrisis.com.

April 18, 2026Episode 7620 min

EP76 Crisis comms at NASA, part 2: Challenger vs. Columbia crisis responses

Send us Fan MailColumbia didn’t arrive when it was supposed to, and the whole world felt the silence. We sit down again with James Hartsfield, recently retired as director of communications at NASA’s Johnson Space Center, to walk through the most difficult minutes and hours after the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster and what crisis leadership looks like when every word carries consequence.He also looked back at the space shuttle Challenger response, and shares his thoughts on how differently the two incidents were handled by NASA leaders. We talk about confirming the loss of the crew, and why that announcement belongs to the White House. From there, James breaks down the fundamentals of crisis communication that keep an agency functioning: stay focused on the job, protect public safety, and move fast with transparency. He explains how first statements shape trust, why credibility can shatter in a day, and how Columbia differed from Challenger when leaders chose to follow the crisis communications plan instead of clamming up.You’ll also hear the real mechanics behind daily press briefings: tracking press coverage, rumors, and speculation, coordinating updates from debris recovery and the investigation, and preparing leaders who are technical experts but still need to sound human. James shares why empathy matters, and why the best “talking points” are really “thought provokers” that help leaders speak truthfully without sounding scripted.If you care about crisis management, emergency communications, public affairs, and high-stakes leadership under pressure, this conversation is a practical playbook. Subscribe, share this with a teammate, and leave a review.You can reach James Hartsfield at hartshfield@gmail.com.Support the showWe'd love to hear from you. Email the show at Tom@leadinginacrisis.com.