Right & Up helps people and organizations become ready for what comes next. We combine preparedness, security, leadership, and personal development to build a culture of readiness, one where people recognize risk, make better decisions, take responsibility, and grow toward the mission in front of them.

Derek Pflugradt

Derek Pflugradt leads Right and Up's security and operational readiness work. He focuses on the practical end of preparedness — walking campuses and facilities, reviewing procedures, surfacing risks and gaps, and turning what he finds into clear, workable systems that people can actually run.

His guiding belief is that readiness should never depend on one person being in the right place at the right time; it should be built into how an organization operates day to day. Derek works alongside leaders and staff to develop distributed awareness, sound decision-making under pressure, and a steady training rhythm — refreshers, tabletop discussions, and after-action reviews — that turns annual compliance into genuine, tested capability.

Dr. Josh Mann

Josh Mann leads Right and Up's communications and public-trust work. He helps organizations say the right thing clearly and credibly — especially in the moments when it matters most. His focus spans crisis communication planning, parent and community messaging, and the reunification and PACE communication frameworks that keep information moving when normal channels are under strain.

Josh's conviction is that strong preparedness has to be matched by strong communication: when an organization acts, the people who depend on it should come away informed, confident, and calm. That emphasis on public trust rounds out the firm's readiness model, pairing operational strength with the ability to lead people through uncertainty.