The Alerting Authority - The Only Place You Will Find

Practitioner experience, Peer-reviewed research.

Two disciplines, one mission: helping the people who warn the public do it with clarity, speed, and confidence when it matters most.

We pair the instincts of working emergency managers with the rigor of published research, so the guidance you get holds up in the field and on the page. When a warning has to reach millions in seconds, there is no room for guesswork.

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The Alerting Authority is a consultancy specializing in mass notification strategy, message development, and alerting governance. Founded by Eddie Bertola and partnering with Dr. Jeannette Sutton of The Warn Room, we bring together frontline public-safety experience and rigorous warning science. We provide leadership, customized training, resources, and subject-matter expertise to emergency management agencies, law enforcement, and communities working to strengthen how they warn the public, before, during, and after emergencies.

Eddie Bertola, MA

Founder

Eddie Bertola is the founder and principal of The Alerting Authority, LLC, where he helps public safety agencies, emergency managers, government organizations, private-sector partners, and enterprise leaders improve how they communicate during emergencies. He is a subject matter expert and practitioner in emergency alerting, mass notification, crisis communication, IPAWS, opt-in notification systems, and protective action messaging.

Eddie is known for taking complex alerting principles and making them practical, understandable, and operational. His work bridges the gap between theory and application by helping organizations move from written plans, policies, and best practices into real-world capability. Through training, consulting, exercises, policy development, and message design, he helps leaders and alerting authorities build confidence through competence.

With nearly two decades of public safety and law enforcement experience, Eddie served for 15 years with the California Highway Patrol, where he supported emergency communication operations, statewide alerting programs, missing person alerts, public warning policy, emergency operations coordination, and real-time decision-making during critical incidents. He currently continues to serve as a police officer with the Pea Ridge, Arkansas Police Department.

Dr. Jeannette Sutton

Partner

Jeannette Sutton, PhD, specializes in disaster and risk, with a primary focus on online informal communications, and public alerts and warnings disseminated via terse messaging channels. Much of her research investigates the evolving role of information and communication technology, including social media and mobile devices, for disaster preparedness, response, and recovery.

She is the founder of The Warn Room, LLC.

Dr. Sutton's research has been published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences; the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society; Journal of Contingencies and Crisis Management; Weather, Climate and Society; Information, Communication, and Society; and Health Communication. She is also a current member of the Committee on Effective Communication of Weather, Water, and Climate Information (CECWCI) of the American Meteorological Society and an Associate Editor for the Natural Hazards Review and Weather, Climate, and Society. Jeannette holds a PhD in sociology from the University of Colorado, Boulder and completed her postdoctoral training at the Natural Hazards Center, University of Colorado, Boulder.

Work with us

Two disciplines, one engagement.

When we partner together, every engagement pairs real-world practitioner experience with peer-reviewed research, so your team's decisions are grounded in both what works and why. Let's talk about strengthening your program.

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