Lei Wu Preparedness · Resilience · AI · Behavior
ContactCivil-military coordinationPreparedness + resilienceApplied AI + behavior change
I work where civil-military coordination, disaster preparedness, artificial intelligence, and human behavior meet. My focus is practical: help people coordinate before a crisis, make better use of technology, and turn good intentions into action that communities can sustain.
Preparedness, made actionable.
Scroll to exploreSelected work
Selected work
Real problems. Practical progress.
01Civil-military interoperability
National coordination means little if teams cannot work together on the ground. This program gave civilian responders and military organizations shared procedures, practical training, and a way to keep improving together.
02Public resilience + behavior change
The campaign started with a simple truth: people already want to protect those they care about. Research, relevant storytelling, and practical next steps helped turn that instinct into measurable intent to prepare.
03Human-guided AI + public preparedness
A case-based fire preparedness app uses real incidents, guided questions, and trusted knowledge to help people practice safer judgment—not hand judgment over to AI.
04Regional partnerships
A promising regional idea became an approved, resourced operation by grounding national priorities in local insight and a partner's own interests.
The problem
The problem I solve
Complex strategies rarely fail for lack of ideas. They fail in the handoff from plan to practice—across competing interests, local context, human behavior, technology, and institutional limits. That handoff is where I work.
The method
How I work
A repeatable way to make sense of complex conditions and build work that people can understand, support, and carry out.
Frame
Separate the outcome that matters from inherited requirements, assumptions, and symptoms. Define success in terms that hold up in the real operating environment.
ClarityUnderstand
Talk with the people inside the system—stakeholders, partners, audiences, and subject-matter experts—to understand incentives, constraints, cultural context, and execution risks.
InsightDesign
Shape those insights into something workable: a strategy, campaign, operational concept, partnership program, or human-guided AI system.
DirectionMobilize
Build ownership, secure decisions and resources, support delivery, measure what happens, and adapt so the work can continue beyond initial approval.
ActionThe mix of strategy, regional knowledge, behavioral insight, and technology changes with each problem. The discipline does not: understand the situation, earn alignment, and build something people can actually use.
Next chapterWhat execution requires↓Execution architecture
What I align
Direction is only a start. Delivery depends on five things working together: stakeholder ownership, cultural legitimacy, human commitment, useful technology, and institutional capacity.
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People interpret strategy through language, history, identity, social norms, and local expectations. I look at how those forces shape trust, legitimacy, decisions, and acceptable action, then adapt the framing and delivery so the plan makes sense where it will operate. Cultural understanding is not just translating words; it is carrying meaning across contexts.
Plans move when people understand them, trust them, and decide to act. I combine audience research, behavioral insight, relationships, and culturally informed communication to understand resistance and motivation. The aim is a credible path from awareness to commitment that leaves people with agency and a reason to stay involved.
Data and AI can organize complexity, reveal patterns, test assumptions, and put useful information in front of people when they need it. I design those tools around their users, with explainable outputs, visible limits, and clear human responsibility. Technology can extend judgment and coordination; it cannot replace trust, expertise, or accountability.
Even a popular idea has to survive mandates, authorities, budgets, approval chains, procurement, staffing, timelines, and existing workflows. I map those realities early, separate fixed constraints from negotiable ones, and shape the plan into something the organization can approve, resource, govern, and sustain.
The work becomes executable when stakeholder ownership, cultural legitimacy, human commitment, technical support, and institutional capacity reinforce one another. I bring them into a clear sequence of decisions, responsibilities, feedback, and measures of progress. The result is a plan people can start, adapt under pressure, and carry beyond initial approval.
Background
A career across boundaries
Each part of my work grew from the last: operating through uncertainty, learning a region, understanding behavior, applying technology, and connecting the pieces before a crisis.
Operational foundation
More than a decade in high-visibility, politically sensitive, and fast-changing environments taught me to work without complete information. The job was to plan with discipline, learn continuously, and adjust quickly while keeping people aligned around the objective.
Indo-Pacific engagement
Mandarin fluency and sustained work across the Indo-Pacific gave me more than language skills. They taught me to read local context, navigate political and institutional sensitivities, and communicate across different perspectives—the groundwork for trust and durable partnership.
Behavior change
Communication is only one influence on behavior. Policy, institutional rules, incentives, social norms, access, and trust matter too. I combine audience research, behavioral science, policy analysis, strategic communication, and testing to find the barriers and design practical ways around them.
Applied analytics + AI
I use analytics and research to find patterns, test assumptions, and build conclusions that can inform policy and institutional change. I look for gaps across people, processes, data, and decisions, then design retrieval and AI-agent workflows that help close them—while keeping judgment, accountability, and final authority with people.
Preparedness + civil resilience
Preparedness becomes resilience when policy, institutions, communities, technology, public education, and civil-military coordination reinforce one another before a crisis. I work on the connections between them so awareness can become commitment, coordination, and practical action. Done well, that makes a society better able to anticipate, absorb, adapt to, and recover from disruption.
Thinking
Current thinking
Notes on decisions, institutions, regional strategy, and emerging technology.
Behavior
Artificial intelligence
Indo-Pacific
Contact
THE NEXT HORIZON
If you're working through a difficult problem involving strategy, emerging technology, human behavior, or the Indo-Pacific, I'd be glad to compare notes.