Darlene Rini

About Darlene Rini

Darlene Rini, PE, is a Director at Jensen Hughes in the Research & Development, Testing and Evaluation division in the Greater Los Angeles area, where she established and leads the Wildfire Risk Mitigation global service line. She has 20+ years of experience as a project manager, fire/wildfire safety engineer, and team leader on a broad range of projects in the built and natural environment in the US and abroad. She has in-depth knowledge in fire safety engineering, performance-based structural fire resiliency, and fire risk & social vulnerability assessments at various scales. She specializes in large-scale developments (e.g. high rises, airports, museums, arenas, office campuses, specialty structures) and resilience of physical assets to fire hazards. She is an international expert in structural fire engineering and actively participates in committees, workshops, code/standards development and University programs.She applies her diverse knowledge and expertise to disaster risk management and societal resilience in developing and developed-country contexts. She integrates qualitative and quantitative socio-technical approaches to holistically assess societal risk and develop practical hazard mitigation strategies at various scales. She serves as Project Director for numerous large wildland-urban-interface fire risk & vulnerability assessments in the government, commercial, utility, private and non-profit sectors to enhance decision-making, planning, policies, and management strategies at various scales of application.Skillset:• Project Management• Collaborative Problem Solving• Leadership • Fire Life Safety Strategy Development• Performance-Based Structural Fire Engineering• Wildfire Risk Mitigation and Disaster Risk Management - CWPPs- Utility wildfire mitigation plans and risk assessment - Wildfire evacuation planning - Post-fire assessments and lessons-learned - WUI fire hazard, risk and vulnerability assessments• Strong Technical Background• Grant writing• Negotiating and Influencing• Women in Leadership

Experience

1. Director

   Jensen Hughes

   Jun 2019 — Present · Los Angeles, CA, US

   Wildfire Risk Mitigation global service line leader for government, utility, commercial, non-profit and private sector Clients ($2 - 3.7M annual revenue)- Collaborating with other industry leaders and SMEs to achieve holistic community-driven, disaster risk management strategies and integration of new technologies - Industry leader in performance-based structural fire engineering and structural fire resiliency- Ventura County Wildfire Collaborative- SFPE Fire Engineering in Very Tall Buildings Committee member- HUD Resiliency in Residential Construction Advisory Board and Fire Task Group member- SoCAL WUI FPO committee member- Thousand Oaks CERT and DART team member (volunteer)- Ojai Valley Fire Safe Council (volunteer)

Education

• UC Santa Barbara

  Doctor of Philosophy - PhD, Wildfire Resiliency Planning, GIScience and Planning

  2022 — 2026

• University of Maryland

  Master of Science (MSc), Fire Protection Engineering

  2004 — 2005

• University of California, Berkeley

  Master of Science (MSc), Structural Engineering

  2003 — 2004

• Lund University

  Master's degree, Disaster Risk Reduction and Climate Change Adapation

  2016 — 2018

• University of California, Berkeley

  Bachelor of Science (BSc), Civil Engineering

  1997 — 2001

• The University of Edinburgh

  Structural Fire Engineering - Thesis Research

  2005 — 2005