Kellie Bentz is familiar with post-disaster accommodations. She spent months, sometimes with no available bed, living in a crowded church basement as she coordinated volunteers as part of the Hurricane Katrina response in New Orleans in 2005.
Now, she’s one of the professionals spearheading a new Silicon Valley group working on harnessing the programs and reach of technology driven companies in disaster relief.
Bentz, 33, has already amassed a considerable amount of knowledge, primarily with nonprofit organizations, on how to respond to disasters. But as of May, she’s been doing so as the first head of global disaster relief at Airbnb, the online platform for finding and renting homes.