Podcast/Video Interviews by Stephen Ibaraki

A Chat with Simon Pereira Shorey: Entrepreneur; Founder and Chief Vision Officer of the International Foundation for the Displaced; served as a member of the specialist Rapid Response Team for the Center for Toxicology and Environmental Health; Served on the board of the Youth Foundation of Jersey City and founded and past president of Resilient JC, Inc.; His work bridges business acumen, risk mitigation, and advocacy for displaced populations and resilient communities.

This week, Stephen Ibaraki has an exclusive interview with with Simon Pereira Shorey.

Simon Pereira Shorey, the Founder and Chief Vision Officer of the International Foundation for the Displaced is a British-born Irish-Brazilian leader and entrepreneur with a diverse international background. Raised in England, he earned an honors degree in Management from the University of Reading in Berkshire. His early career drew on his family's legacy in risk mitigation - the Pereira family operated the Rioguarda Group across six Brazilian states for three decades before its sale in the 2000s. He began as a consultant business and asset valuer, advising major clients including BP, British Gas, and the Duchy of Cornwall estate of HRH The Prince of Wales. After moving to the United States for the genomics project that he founded and led, he settled in the USA 25 years ago, living in Manhattan and then Jersey City, Pereira Shorey applied his management expertise to building multi-tiered global organizations while becoming deeply embedded in community affairs.

Pereira Shorey's career has spanned entrepreneurship, the arts, and public service, with a growing focus on resilience and humanitarian impact. He spearheaded initiatives such as the Irish American Arts Awards - which earned recognition at the Head of State level - and GeneAfrica, Inc., which introduced pioneering genealogical genomic concepts to the African-American community, working with key African-American internationally renowned thought leaders. In Jersey City, he served on the "I Love Jersey City Public Schools" Committee and the Board of Education's Safety and Security Committee, while volunteering with the Community Emergency Response Team. His personal experiences with major crises, including 9/11 in Manhattan, the 2003 Northeast Blackout, and Superstorm Sandy in 2012, along with on-the-ground responses to emergencies such as a 2017 street shooting, led to formal commendations for his disaster mitigation work and his personal intervention in the street shooting. He has also served on the board of the Youth Foundation of Jersey City and founded Resilient JC, Inc., a 501(c)(3) nonprofit dedicated to disaster resilience and community preparedness, serving as its first President.

Pereira Shorey also served as a member of the specialist Rapid Response Team for the Center for Toxicology and Environmental Health for nearly a decade, responding to major Hazmat Incidents in the USA and the UK. He served as Project Manager for Apple TV, leading local pandemic oversight for their flagship Spielberg/Hanks production of 'Masters of the Air, the second largest TV or movie production in the world at the time (publicly reported budget of "up to $500m"), protecting both Apple's investment and the well-being of personnel, worked at Field Command for the $1 billion response to the Norfolk-Southern East Palestine Railroad Incident, and additionally served at many other major Hazmat incidents, including the 2025 Los Angeles Palisades Fire and the 2019 TPC Port Neches chemical plant explosions, which led to evacuation of 60,000 people and debris dropping 10 miles from the incident. Today, Simon Pereira Shorey serves as Founder and Chief Vision Officer of The International Foundation for the Displaced. He serves on the Board of Advisers for the World Cares Center Disaster Volunteerism Academy and is on the Advisory Board of the Centre for Minorities Research at the University of St Andrews. His work consistently bridges business acumen, risk mitigation, and advocacy for displaced populations and resilient communities.