Darlene Rini

Darlene is a Director in the Research, Development, Testing & Evaluation Division out of Southern California, where she also leads the firm's Wildfire Risk Mitigation Global Service Line. Her 20+ years of experience have earned her international recognition as an expert in structural fire engineering, code consulting, wildfire resiliency and disaster risk management.

Her current focus is on developing holistic wildfire risk mitigation strategies and action plans at building, parcel, enterprise, and city/county levels to support decision-making, policy development, and wildland-urban-interface risk management. This includes several large projects in utility wildfire regulations and evaluations, wildfire evacuation assessments, regional and local Community Wildfire Protection Plans (CWPPs), post-disaster investigations, and subject matter advisory roles (e.g., FEMA, HUD, SFPE).

Darlene volunteers with a variety of professional and private organizations such as Ventura County Wildfire Collaborative, the Advisory Board of HUD’s Residential Resiliency Working Group, IAFSS’ Large Outdoor Fires and the Built Environment (LOF&BE) Working Group, SoCAL FPO Wildland Urban Interface Committee, SFPE’s Very Tall Building Task Group, Thousand Oaks DART & CERT programs and Ojai Valley Fire Safe. She has taught graduate-level courses in Structural Fire Engineering at the University of Maryland and CalPoly SLO for several years and is also active in the professional development of wildfire and fire industry guidance documents, codes and standards, publications, government workshops, university programs and continuing education, including working with FEMA on wildfire/fire national programming.