A native of New Orleans, Alex is the founder of Desire Line and a certified Planner with over 15 years of planning, project and emergency management experience. In her role as President and CEO she has pushed to elevate the connections between planning, floodplain management, and emergency management professions not only in her business model, but also in practice, actively working with clients to improve their disaster recovery outcomes by leveraging non-traditional workflows and professions to achieve maximum effectiveness and multiply beneficial outcomes.

Prior to starting Desire Line, she was the Program Manager with Louisiana’s Office of Community Development (OCD) responsible for implementing a $1.2B statewide program, the Louisiana Watershed Initiative. In her role, she led a long-range vision for the state’s multi-pronged approach to mitigate future flood risk focused on natural boundaries.  She has a history of excellence in managing complex, challenging projects that require enhanced logistics, strategic long-range planning, and focused efforts across multiple teams with programmed workflows and short, high-pressure deadlines. Her collaborative attitude and unprecedented work ethic has built strong, lasting relationships within and across local, regional, state, and federal agencies.

She is also the former Planning, Zoning, and Code Enforcement Director, and Damage Assessment Lead, of St. John the Baptist Parish, Louisiana.  In these roles she set a new standard for post-disaster data collection, managed parishwide transportation and multi-modal projects and grants, and she and her team successfully worked with the public and elected officials to draft, adopt, and implement a content neutral sign code, adult and live entertainment standards, comprehensive nonconforming use/structure/site standards, a hearing procedure to administratively adjudicate code violations, four cultural districts and a historic district commission, a coastal management plan and coastal zone advisory committee, and a variety of nuisance standards to support residential neighborhood revitalization.

Alex also served as the APA LA Metro New Orleans Section Director (2017) and worked as a Planner in Jefferson Parish (2011-2015), Louisiana, promoting smart growth in the Parish, and leading efforts to establish and promote pedestrian and businesses improvement districts.  She graduated with honors from UNO (Masters, 2011) and Loyola University New Orleans (BFA, 2009). 

Jared is a 16-year retired Captain of the New Orleans Fire Department, Special Operations, where he worked every hurricane that struck the New Orleans metro area between 2007 to 2023 (e.g., Gustav, Ike, Isaac, and Ida).  He has managed major disaster response efforts across the country, including field team staff, data collection and analysis, and department initiatives. His experience includes surveying damage locally, as well as out-of-state deployments as a member of the Louisiana State Urban Search and Rescue [La USAR] team, fulfilling search and rescue and damage assessment roles for the EF4 vortex tornado that struck Tuscaloosa and destroyed portions of Birmingham, Alabama in 2011; and Hurricane Michael that struck Panama City and Mexico Beach, Florida in 2018.   

He is dedicated to serving the public’s interest, understands the sensitive nature of post disaster recovery environments and what residents are going though, and has demonstrated a keen ability to lead teams under pressure to perform work in a timely, thorough, and respectful manner.  He is also a deputy constable in Jefferson Parish, Louisiana, for over six years and has been a nationally registered EMT since 2009. 

At Desire Line, we believe in building a team ready to support each other in a time of need.  For this reason, field staff for private property damage assessments has historically been provided by Desire Line in coordination with the local hires scouted from within local fire departments and led by Jared.   As Desire Line Chief Operations Officer, he plays a critical role in project management, team logistics, budget coordination, Emergency Operations Center support, and field team supervision. Jared received his bachelor’s degree in Sociology from Loyola University in 2007, immediately joined the New Orleans Fire Department, and has been critical to Desire Line’s success since the Company’s start.

Evelyn Campo is a Certified Floodplain Manager with over 14 years of planning, floodplain management and multi-departmental governmental coordination experience. Prior to her work at Desire Line, Evelyn was a Resilience Planning Specialist working on the Louisiana Watershed Initiative and drafted the state’s action plan to spend $1.2B in federal grants, designed statewide programs, implementation policies, and standard operating procedures. As former Zoning Regulatory Administrator, Coastal Zone Administrator and Floodplain Manager in St. John Parish, Evelyn established the Parish’s Coastal Management Plan, Coastal Use Permitting process, conducted comprehensive planning, and processed land use petitions.

Evelyn has managed the development and completion of major initiatives aimed at focusing community goals and objectives, isolating appropriate fund sources, and advancing major projects that support sustainable community growth and disaster resilience. A seasoned project manager for state and federal infrastructure projects, Evelyn has stretched federal dollars and brought innovation and simplicity to complex multi-stakeholder projects. At Desire Line, Evelyn directs project management efforts, including schedule and budget development, staff management and assignments, ongoing and final deliverable review and quality control, internal milestone and timeline/task management, and outreach and engagement plan implementation.

She graduated with honors from UNO (Masters of Urban and Regional Planning, 2013) and Savannah College of Art and Design (BFA, 2010). She volunteers with NOLA Ready and has extensive EOC and disaster response and recovery expertise with extreme weather and hurricane events in Louisiana.