Leadership: Founder, Gregory Vigneaux, M.S.

Gregory Vigneaux is the principal at Operational Coherence. He holds a B.S. in Wildland Fire Management and an M.S. in Emergency Services Administration. He is a speaker, researcher, author, and consultant with experience in the non-profit, government, and private sectors. Gregory has a collection of published works and has delivered over twenty research presentations around the world. He is focused on practical applications of complexity, biology, design, and philosophy to wildfire problems and innovations. 

During some of his most formative years, Gregory worked on Hotshot Crews for the National Park Service and the United States Forest Service, as well as a National Park Service Type II Initial Attack and fuels crew. He earned the coveted Rookie of the Year Award on the United States Forest Service's Big Bear Hotshots and was a recipient of the National Park Service's Fuels and Ecology Award: Promoting Fire-Adapted Human Communities, for work completed in Acadia National Park while belonging to the Cape Cod National Seashore Fire Crew. 

He has fought high-priority fires as a highly trained and conditioned firefighter working in remote locations with little logistical support in an arduous environment in twelve states from coast to coast, including Alaska, and with a heavy concentration in California. Gregory has fought wildfires that have been written about in textbooks for teaching following generations of wildland firefighters that he has coached and continues to provide coaching services to.

After working in wildfire, Gregory finished a Master of Science after earning the Woodrow Wilson Award, honors, and being awarded to the Dean's List.  Right before graduation, he entered consulting and academia. He has consulted for a wildfire equipment innovation startup, an emergency management AI project, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, cofounded a startup, worked on an expansive policy project bringing together design and complexity, designed and developed courses including a 10-hour self-study course on systems thinking housed at the Naval Postgraduate School's Center for Homeland Defense and Security, and provided support and leadership in graduate courses in the U.S. and New Zealand, written papers, maintained a blog, and written formal documents including a book. 

Gregory continues to find ways for research to help others in wildland fire and introduce his findings to different communities through conference talks, blog posts, and publications. He is continuously seeking a deeper and more applied meaning of theory combined with experience, for supporting problem-solving, design, and strategy decisions.

Academic Publications 

• Vigneaux, G. J. (2005). In search of the brighter edge of darkness: Essays and tools for public safety. Distributed by Lulu.com.
• Vigneaux, G. J. (Forthcoming, 2025). Transitioning From Biological Networks To Participation In Social Networks. Journal of Emergency Management.
• Vigneaux, G. J. (2023). A design philosophy for emergency management. In S. M. van Manen, C. Jaenichen, T. S. Lin, K. Kremer, & R. Ramírez (Eds.), Design for emergency management (pp. 13-30). New York: Routledge.
• Feldmann-Jensen, S., Jensen, S., Sandy, M., & Vigneaux, G. (2019). The Next Generation Core Competencies for Emergency Management. Journal of Emergency Management, 17(1), 17-25. doi:10.5055/jem.2019.0393
• Vigneaux, G. J. (2017a). Emergency management/homeland security education regional academic collaborative Region I. FEMA. Retrieved from https://training.fema.gov/hiedu/docs/region_i_ higher_educational_academic_collaboration_508compliant.pdf
• Vigneaux, G. J. (2017b). Emergency management/homeland security education regional academic collaborative Region IX. FEMA. Retrieved from https://training.fema.gov/hiedu/docs/region_ix_ collaborative_engagement_508compliant.pdf
• Paci-Green, R., Vigneaux, G., Jensen, S., & Petal, M. (2016). Developing and Implementing Comprehensive School Safety Policy: GADRRRES Research-into-Practice Brief.

Relevant Academic and Industry Presentations

Incident Operational Complexity

Operational Coherence, July 20205

Are you Transitioning or Refining the Present?

Operational Coherence, April 2025

The Biology of Community Resilience: A dynamic architecture of mood and social-relational processes

The International Emergency Management Society Conference, 2024

Shadow Theater: A look at time

Colorado Wildland Fire Conference, 2024

Meeting the Moment: Using every moment to drive design

Colorado Wildland Fire Conference, 2024

Fire Service and Academic Research Collaboration

Public Center for Safety Excellence Conference, 2024

Gregory Vigneaux & Vince Anderson

Dynamic Entanglements: Complex Systems in Emergency Management

Colorado Emergency Management Conference, 2024

Designing Ethics for Emergency Management Consultants

Colorado Emergency Management Conference, 2024

Managing Uncertainty in Emergency Management Through Explanation

The International Emergency Management Society Conference, 2023

Who we are and who we want to be: A look at organizational change

Colorado Emergency Management Conference, 2022

Wildfire and the need to Explain Yourself

Colorado Wildland Fire Conference, 2021

Autopoietic Socio-Technical Systems: A new lens for understanding anticipation

Northern European Emergency and Disaster Studies Conference, 2021

Design Thinking for the End of the World, Colorado Emergency Management Conference, 2020

Risk Adaptation as World-Making: A look at human dimensions, Colorado Wildland Fire Conference, 2018

Complex Adaptive Systems in Emergency Management, Joint Centre for Disaster Research, Massey University, NZ, 2017