Sally Bishop

Sally Bishop is a 23-year veteran of Emergency Management. She was appointed interim director of Pinellas County’s Emergency Management Department in February 2007, and permanent Director in January of 2008, after serving for nearly two years as assistant director under former EM Director Gary Vickers. Her experience is a culmination of more than two decades of emergency planning and disaster response and operations in the field. 

She had started with Pinellas County’s Emergency Management in 1986 and over the next seven years worked numerous storm, disaster and recovery efforts, including:

She spearheaded the development and refinement of numerous county programs and operations, including the Hurricane Evacuation Implementation Guide, Special Needs Evacuation Program and the county’s disaster recovery operations. Bishop is credited with the co-creation of the county health care agencies-attended hurricane conference, Hurricanes and Health Care, which provides critical training and information to county health providers. 

With 11 years experience at Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), and 23 Presidential Disaster Declarations behind her, Bishop is known for her strength and first-hand knowledge in recovery efforts.

Sally completed course work at St. Petersburg College with and Associate of Science degree in Computer Science.

Tom Iovino

Pinellas County Communications specialist   (top)

Born and raised in New Jersey, Iovino (Eye-oh-veeno) left the Garden State in 1987 to attend the University of Maryland at College Park.  He graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in English Literature and Language in May 1991. 

Iovino started working with Pinellas County in 1994 with the Property Appraiser’s office, and moved to the Communications Department in 1998.  He has provided public education and information support to Emergency Management through 16 storm activations, wildfires, large-scale accidents and other emergencies.

Iovino is the primary public information contact in the county for emergency matters.  He is fully compliant in the Federal National Incident Management System (NIMS) and has been trained at the National Emergency Management Institute in Emmitsburg, Maryland.

Iovino produced a number of education and preparation videos, including Shuttering your Home, a half-hour instructional video on how to protect a home’s windows using plywood. He received numerous public information and education awards from the National Hurricane Conference and the Florida Governor’s Hurricane Conference. 

Iovino is an instructor at the Governors and National hurricane conferences and instructs basic PIO classes through the state’s emergency training program.

Steve Elliot

President and CEO, Elliot Consulting Services   (top)

Steve Elliot founded Elliot Consulting Services in 2003 after a highly successful career as a global account manager, corporate trainer, and senior sales executive from the communications and high-tech industries. Mr. Elliot’s broad professional experience includes sales, marketing, business development, operations, project management, business continuity planning, emergency preparedness, and disaster recovery positions with AT&T, Control Data, Westinghouse, and ABC/Capitol Cities.

During his tenure at AT&T, Mr. Elliot’s responsibilities included the management of large global enterprise accounts. He focused on performing detailed assessments of the technological and communications needs of his clients, and then proposing solutions to help them operate more efficiently and effectively. Mr. Elliot was involved with the development of emergency response and disaster recovery plans for several of his former clients including Precision Response Corporation, Home Shopping Network, Expedia, Ticketmaster, Hotels.com, LendingTree.com, Sports Authority, and Racal-Milgo, to name a few.

Steve Elliot has participated in numerous seminars and conferences relating to business continuity, emergency preparedness planning, hazardous materials management, homeland security, pandemic planning, and data recovery issues. Mr. Elliot has been a featured presenter at hurricane awareness seminars and hazardous material management seminars around the state of Florida. Mr. Elliot is a Certified Business Resiliency Manager (CBRM), and FEMA-certified in Emergency Management, Incident Command System (ICS), and the National Incident Management System (NIMS). Mr. Elliot is also an officer within the Greater Tampa Bay Chapter of the Association of Contingency Planners, and a member of the Tampa Bay area’s Local Emergency Planning Committee’s Facilities Disaster Planning Team, the Institute of Management Consultants, and the American Meteorological Society. Steve Elliot is also a FEMA-certified Disaster Housing Inspector.