Vincent "Nick" Hernandez

V. Nicholas Hernandez is a pragmatic and effectual 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.

 

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 and implementing every aspect of the organization’s latest iteration of its Field Training and Evaluation 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.

 

Nick's pinnacle experience came when he was appointed as the Director of Emergency Management. In this role, he led a hand-picked talented team responsible for managing all of the department’s nearly half-billion dollar budgeted operations related to tactical and strategic crisis management, ensuring compliance with federally mandated emergency management best practices, and integrating the department's goals and objectives with corporate, state, and regional partners. During this staff assignment, Nick was also assigned to represent the City of Austin to negotiate and manage its Interlocal Agreement for Public Safety with the Texas Department of Public Safety’s Capitol Complex. He was assigned to coordinate the City of Austin’s Joint Counter Terrorism Awareness Workshop Series (JCTAWS), hosted by DHS and FEMA. Nick was also assigned to serve on the Texas Capital Area Council of Governments (CAPCOG) Homeland Security Task Force. His exceptional leadership, pragmatism, and results earned him the department’s Superior Service Citation and Meritorious Service Medal.

 

Since his retirement, he has worked with various government and private entities within their various strata to help identify principal causes of impactful manifestations to their organizations in order to subsequently facilitate measurable integrated solutions in affected areas, while simultaneously 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 also 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 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.