Dr. Carby is a former Director General of Jamaica’s Office of Disaster Preparedness & Emergency Management (ODPEM), a position she held for over ten years. While at the ODPEM she is credited with placing risk reduction on Jamaica’s national agenda and pioneering the development of a national mitigation policy. She also expanded the hazard mapping programme and fostered the use of hazard maps by Parish Councils in their development planning.
After serving in this capacity, she became the first Director of Hazard Management for the Cayman Islands . During her tenure, she established a full-time national office for disaster risk management and developed a national strategic framework for disaster risk reduction which has guided national programmes in the Cayman Islands.
Dr. Carby continues to work on several disaster management programmes locally, regionally and internationally. She has also served voluntarily with the United Nations (UN) and regional organizations. She was one of the experts selected to the UN’s Scientific and Technical Committee of the International Decade for Natural Disaster Reduction and a member of the Advisory Board for the UN Central Emergency Response Fund. She is the immediate past Chair of the International Science Council’s Regional Office for Latin America and the Caribbean (ROLAC) Committee on Disaster Risk Reduction and Chair of the Education Sector Sub-committee of the Caribbean Disaster Emergency Management Agency (CDEMA).
Her research interests include Integration of Knowledge Bases in Disaster Risk Reduction; Disaster Risk Management Planning for persons with Disabilities and Disaster Risk Management Governance.