Public Risk Management

Our guest for this episode of PRIMA's Risk Management Podcast is Shannon Gunderman. Shannon is the administrative services director of Yuma County, Arizona where he is responsible for administrating the county’s property, liability, unemployment and workers' compensation programs. He also serves as the county’s enterprise risk management project manager. Shannon explains that enterprise risk management (ERM) is a completely new way of thinking about risk. ERM approaches risk as the uncertainty that affects the achievement of an entity’s goals, as well as a part of the decision-making process across an organization. Shannon emphasizes that risk doesn’t appear in silos; it can affect multiple parts of an organization. Therefore, the goal of enterprise risk management is to address and treat risk throughout the organization at all levels. In essence, with ERM, everyone in the organization is a risk manager.