Michael Armstrong
Michael Armstrong is the Senior Vice President for Member Services at the International
Code Council (ICC), and is a Visiting Professor at The George Washington University,
Washington, D.C., instructing in the Crisis, Emergency and Risk Management
Concentration in the Graduate Program of the School of Engineering Management and
Systems Engineering. At the Code Council, he oversees 70 staff in seven departments
that support the functions of training, certification and testing, member support,
communication, marketing and meetings. The ICC is a non-profit organization with a
customer base that includes state and local code officials, building contractors, federal
agencies, architects, and strategic partner organizations working in various facets of the
building safety community.
Mr. Armstrong has a diverse career background spanning the fields of journalism, law,
politics, government management, and consulting. His past work includes: four years as
a reporter and editor for several Colorado newspapers; 10 years as an Assistant City
Attorney in Aurora, Colorado, with an emphasize on code enforcement, land use and
human resources; seven years as an appointee of President Clinton at the Federal
Emergency Management Agency, as the Region VIII Director in Denver and the Senateconfirmed
Associate Director for Mitigation; and over five years as a management
consultant specializing in homeland security strategic planning for ICF International. He
also served as Executive Director of the Colorado Democratic Party, and as the Deputy
Director of the Colorado Governor’s Office of Energy Conservation.
Mr. Armstrong holds a Bachelor of Arts in English and a Bachelor of Science in
Journalism from the University of Colorado at Boulder, and a Juris Doctorate from the
Pepperdine University School of Law, Malibu, California where he served on the Law
Review.
During his tenure as a consultant at ICF International, his clients included the Governor
of Louisiana (post-Katrina rebuilding); the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (food
safety preparedness); the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (critical infrastructure
protection, capabilities planning); and the metropolitan areas of Seattle, Los Angeles and
Washington, D.C. (homeland security strategic planning, exercises, and public/private
partnerships). While at FEMA, he managed national programs addressing risk reduction
ranging from grant programs to partnerships with the scientific community and private
sector. He also provided oversight for FEMA response, recovery, mitigation and
preparedness activities in a six-state region, and headed efforts to reinvent the agency’s
community outreach and employee performance activities.
Mr. Armstrong has been published in a variety of periodicals and journals, and
participated in numerous media interviews, Congressional testimony, and guest lectures.
He is admitted to the practice of law in Colorado and before the U.S. Supreme Court.
