Vincent "Nick" Hernandez

V. Nicholas Hernandez is a pragmatic and effectual instructor-facilitator and organizational development consultant, specializing in mitigating policy and practice gaps. This specialty emerged while serving in the United States Marine Corps, subsequently flourished during his 25-year career as a public servant, and is continually refined with every professional interaction and academic pursuit. His empirical ability to train and facilitate in the areas of leadership, project and change management by objectives, communication and collaboration, curriculum development, dispassionate business impact analysis, and continuity of operations, characterizes his current consultancy. He has extensive experience in identifying streamlined solutions to complex problems and implementing integrated performance measures.

 

Nick is a veteran of Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm. During his military career, he was meritoriously promoted three times for recognized performance, innovation, and applied leadership and ultimately obtained the rank of Sergeant. He subsequently pursued a career with the Austin (Texas) Police Department, from which he retired in 2017. His most notable roles with the APD included serving on patrol and conducting child abuse, organized crime, and internal investigations. During his first supervisory assignment, Nick took the initiative and redesigned every aspect of the organization’s Vehicular Homicide Unit. As APD’s appointed Field Training Coordinator, he was responsible for designing in implementing every aspect of the organization’s latest iteration of its Field Training Program, while simultaneously co-leading and managing the organization’s Recruit Training Program (Police Academy). Nick designed various curricula to include, but not limited to, leadership, interpersonal communications, and critical incident review that employs a tiered methodology. His curricula are designed to be scenario-based and rooted in organizational policy and andragogy.

 

The apex of his service within that organization came when he was appointed Director of Emergency Management. Along with his dynamic and talented team, he was responsible for assessing, analyzing, overhauling, leading, and managing all of the organization’s nearly half-billion dollar budgeted operations related to tactical and strategic crisis management. In all aspects of the organization’s operations, his team successfully ensured it adopted and adhered to all federally mandated emergency management best practices, as well as ensured the department seamlessly integrated all of its emergency management goals and objectives with its corporate (city), state, and regional (10-county region) partners’ goals and objectives. During his tenure, he indelibly established his reputation as an organizational development specialist and was awarded the Superior Service Citation and Meritorious Service Medal for some of his most notable results.

 

Since his retirement, he has worked with various government entities within their various strata to help identify principal causes of impactful manifestations to their organizations in order to facilitate and manage operational and leadership development in all areas, while demonstrating unwavering objectivity and the utmost discretion to ensure clients’ privacy.

 

Graduating in 2022, Nick earned a bachelor’s degree from the University of Texas at Austin with a major in Government and a minor in Business Foundations. His academics primarily focused on the communion and interdependence between business, government, and society (e.g., Business Ethics and Social Responsibility, Government and Politics in Western Europe, Data Analysis, Public Policy, Terrorism, Marketing, U.S. Constitutional Law, Risk Management, and Strategic Corporate Communication, etc.). He is a graduate of the City of Austin’s (Texas) inaugural Executive Academy and possesses an Instructor Trainer certification from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, an Academic Instructor certification from the Texas Commission on Law Enforcement, and a Social/Behavioral Researchers’ certification from the Collaborative Institutional Training Initiative. He has completed thousands of hours of combined training in the areas of management, leadership, and emergency management best practices, with a concentration in plans and policy, continuity of operations, and infrastructure protection. He also maintains a Master Peace Officer License with the Texas Commission on Law Enforcement. He recently founded Exiger International LLC™, a concierge consultancy company, and actively works with other partner companies as a freelance instructor-facilitator and organizational development specialist. In his spare time, he is developing a guidebook to help organizations implement policy-rooted experiential training programs for their new and incumbent employees.