Speakers

Tom Watkins is Policy and Insight Lead at the VCS Emergencies Partnership (VCSEP), where he leads work to analyse resilience challenges, identify emerging trends, and translate insight into practical improvements for policy, partnership working, and the UK's resilience system as a whole. He works closely with voluntary and community organisations, researchers, and resilience partners to ensure that community experience and evidence inform preparedness, response, recovery, and adaptation activities.

Tom's career spans community development, health and wellbeing, volunteering, and local voluntary sector infrastructure, giving him a strong understanding of how resilient communities are built long before emergencies occur. He has worked extensively across the public and voluntary, community, faith and social enterprise (VCFS) sectors, supporting collaboration between grassroots organisations, public services, and national partners.

An advocate for the role of civil society in resilience, Tom is particularly interested in community-centred approaches to preparedness, the use of insight and learning to strengthen systems that serve people better, and the contribution of social connection and holistic wellbeing to community resilience. At the heart of Tom's work is a belief that resilient communities are built through strong relationships, shared learning and local insight, and that the voices of communities should help shape the decisions that affect them.