Erin Greten serves clients by applying her practical experience with federal grants and administrative law to identify creative ways to apply for federal assistance, comply with federal assistance agreements, create assistance programs, and resolve disputes with awarding agencies. She primarily represents public and private non-profit entities throughout the country, guiding them through complex federal and state regulatory frameworks to secure and retain federal disaster relief funding.
Erin is passionate about helping her clients understand the resources available to them following a disaster and comply with the rules and requirements that attach to those resources. She enjoys simplifying and solving complex problems, assisting communities in need, and helping federal agencies and survivors understand each other. She often informally resolves misunderstandings between federal agencies and aid recipients and subrecipients. Erin also formally appeals and arbitrates disputes with the goal of maximizing assistance in compliance with the law.
Erin came to Baker Donelson following public service. While at FEMA, she served as a resource to others, often tackling the most complicated and challenging issues. She worked to create new programs, remove barriers to assistance, find creative ways to solve problems, maximize limited resources, and document the legal basis for decisions to reduce risk. Erin spent five years as FEMA's Associate Chief Counsel for Regional & Field Operations, where she oversaw the on-scene delivery of legal services during all presidentially declared disasters and emergencies nationwide. She also managed the delivery of legal services in FEMA's ten regional offices. Before serving in that role, Erin spent three years as FEMA's Deputy Associate Chief Counsel for Recovery. She was the principal legal advisor for FEMA's disaster recovery programs, including Public Assistance, Individual Assistance, Fire Management Assistance Grants, and Community Disaster Loans. She began her time with FEMA after being detailed from the U.S. Coast Guard to run FEMA's regulatory program. What began as a 60-day detail away from her role as Coast Guard regulatory counsel turned into three years serving as FEMA's Assistant Chief Counsel for Regulation & Policy. In that position, she managed the agency's regulatory program and developed process improvements, including the introduction of data-based decision-making.
She left FEMA in 2018 to serve as the career senior executive Chief Counsel of the First Responder Network Authority. There, she proactively managed and resolved legal issues of all types for the federal agency responsible for the nationwide public safety broadband network known as FirstNet. In 2021, during the unprecedented nationwide COVID-19 public health emergency, Erin joined Baker Donelson. Her goal was to help hospitals and communities use financial assistance from FEMA, the U.S. Small Business Administration, the U.S. Treasury, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and others to get through the pandemic. She helped public entities and private non-profits properly procure, document, justify, and get reimbursed for hundreds of millions spent to safely open, operate, prevent the spread, and treat patients in the COVID-19 environment. While with the Firm, she has also helped federal grant recipients and subrecipients recover from more traditional events like Hurricanes Irma, Maria, Harvey, Michael, Dorian, Ian, and Helene and devastating wildfires in Hawaii, Oregon, and Texas.
In addition to her private practice, Erin served as an adjunct professor at the George Washington University Law School. For several years, she taught a full-semester course, Law of Emergencies: Natural Disasters, Climate Crises, Pandemics, and Beyond. The course surveyed the laws, regulations, and policy considerations applicable to emergency management, and the legal challenges encountered in response, recovery, insurance, preparedness, and mitigation. Although she recently stepped away from her professorial role, Erin continues to publicly teach, speak, and write about disaster recovery legal issues.