Paul Conway is a third-generation firefighter who served with the Milwaukee Fire Department for 31 years and retired as the Chief of Operations in 2012.  He also served with the New Berlin Volunteer Fire Department for seventeen years.  Paul used his fire service experience and passion to start Conway Shield. Nearly 40 years later, the Conway Shield business he founded strives to be a leading source of protective gear, safety equipment, and educational resources for first responders in the U.S.  Paul continues to actively serve in his community and serves as both a chief sponsor and senior advisor for Leadership Under Fire. 

The filing period for the FDNY Firefighter Open Competitive exam #4044 opened on Monday, June 24, 2024. The last filing period was in 2017. The path to joining the Greatest Job on Earth is competitive and tedious – it requires both perseverance and patience. That is why the Leadership Under Fire Team and Paddy Brown Program hosted an information session to educate and encourage those military service members and veterans desiring to join the FDNY as well as those who are considering military service prior to joining the FDNY. The conversation featured the perspectives of several current FDNY members whose path to the FDNY was shaped by their military service. The conversation also provided insight into the FDNY’s hiring process, employment requirements, the professional benefits of military service, and commentary on military veterans who have served our Nation and FDNY with distinction.      

Of note: The Notice of Examination for Exam #4044 was released after the conversation was recorded. Subsequently, those who are interested in joining the FDNY are encouraged to familiarize themselves with the NOE prior to filing for the exam.  

Lieutenant Jason Leone started his career with the Baltimore City Fire Department in 2010 and is currently assigned to Rescue Company 1. Prior to promotion, he was a firefighter in Truck Co. 23 and an Emergency Vehicle Driver in Truck Companies 23 and 6. Jason is a member of the BCFD’s Special Operations team and is an adjunct instructor at the Fire Academy. Jason is a former Captain Timmy Stackpole LUF Scholar recipient. 

This conversation you are about to hear was delivered during an online LUF Leadership Development Course to which Jason contributed. The final module of the course is dedicated to an examination of mission-oriented risk and resilience, specifically “what science, history, and experience” informs us about what happens when we compete to win and lose. Jason candidly reflects on his professional and personal journey following the Stricker Street fire which claimed the lives of Lieutenant Paul Butrim and Firefighters Kelsey Sadler and Kenny Lacayo in January 2022.

In this conversation, Deondre Smalls and Tom Flores of the Camden City (NJ) Fire Department’s Squad Co. 7 discuss balancing the job with life away from the firehouse to optimize both professional and personal performance. Deondre is a second-generation member of the Camden City Fire Department. He earned a bachelor’s degree in journalism/media studies from Rutgers University and has worked as a research assistant at NFL Films since 2020. Tom is a first generation American. Since 2022, he has worked with nonprofits mentoring fatherless and undocumented youths.

This conversation was recently delivered during an online LUF Emerging Leaders Development course. The course is uniquely built around the perspectives of emerging leaders with 5-10 years of job time from several different departments. The course equips and encourages emerging leaders to embrace, create, and recognize opportunities to lead and exercise initiative in a fashion consistent with relative experience and culture.

In this conversation, Jim McNamara and Jason Brezler discuss the genesis of Leadership Under Fire. Jim and Jason explore how Jason’s experiences as a combat leader in Iraq and Afghanistan shaped his leadership philosophy and how he went about building the LUF Team.

Tom Miller is a FDNY firefighter assigned to Ladder Co. 26 in Harlem. He is a former US Marine and served as a forward observer in combat units in both Iraq and Afghanistan. Tom attended Columbia University on the GI Bill and obtained a bachelor's degree in Astrophysics. He serves as a human performance analytics program designer and analyst for Leadership Under Fire.

Since our formal inception more than a decade ago, the Leadership Under Fire Team has championed professional reading. We have fervently advocated for increased professional reading in the American Fire Service and similar high risk industries that do not enjoy the robust professional development curricula that the US military provides. The LUF team believes that a careful examination of history's most accomplished mission oriented leaders reveals that their success was strongly correlated to a scholarly appreciation of literature and professional reading. We have been humbled to watch many in the LUF network devour books that on the surface have nothing to do with the fire service, and yet everything to do with the fire ground.

The past several years has challenged each of us as well as our families, institutions, communities, and nation in a myriad of ways: military conflict in Eastern Europe and the Middle East, a global pandemic, civil and political unrest at home. The proliferation of digital communications platforms and the emergence of disruptive technology have only exacerbated the intellectual, emotional, and moral demands on those of us leading in mission oriented and lethal vocations. Leaders with four years of service and leaders with four decades of service alike have found today's operational environment to be disorienting and uncomfortable. The unfortunate news is that there is no evidence that the pace and acceleration of technological and social change and instability is likely to slow anytime soon. The favorable news is that the predicament we find ourselves in might not be as novel as we think. If we look at history through a wider lens, professional reading has never been as critical as it is now.

Rigorous reading affords each of us valuable insight that provides principled leaders encouragement, and even a roadmap for navigating institutional and social technical changes. In 2022, LUF launched our inaugural book club. The online book club has been a conduit to meaningful discourse, reflection, and critical thought. It was only fitting that LU F's Senior Mentor Jim Roussell served as the initial LUF book club leader given his infectious commitment to professional reading over the course of his remarkable career in the United States Marine Corps and Chicago Police Department. In this podcast episode, Jim unpacks Marcus Aurelius's meditations and provides valuable insight into how leaders use professional reading to cultivate leadership, critical thinking, and complex problem solving skills.

Our guest in this episode of the Leadership Under Fire Humanizing the Narrative Podcast is Lieutenant Thomas Daly. Lt Daly joined the ranks of the FDNY in 1997. As a firefighter, Tommy served in Ladder Co. 176 and Rescue Co. 2. As a Lieutenant, he was assigned to Ladder Co. 111 and Rescue Co. 2. Tom retired from the Department in 2023 with 27 years of service. LUF Founder Jason Brezler hosts.

This episode features two women who currently serve in the Milwaukee Fire Department—Lieutenants Kendria Donaldson and Jessica Ziems. Both started their firefighting journeys as Fire Cadets in 2013. The two-year program hires individuals between the ages of 17-19 and starts them on their firefighting career. They completed recruit class in 2015 and have been honing their firefighting and leadership skills in the Milwaukee FD since that time. Both attended the Leadership Under Fire Leadership Development Course at The Farm in the Fall of 2023 and offered a great deal of insight to the cohort. 

The original broadcast date of this episode was March 25, 2021. On March 25, 1911, the Triangle Shirtwaist Company factory in New York City burned, tragically killing 146 workers. It is remembered as one of the most infamous incidents in American industrial history. The tragedy brought widespread attention to the dangerous sweatshop conditions of factories, spurred the creation of the FDNY’s Bureau of Fire Prevention, and led to the development of a series of laws and regulations that better protected the safety of workers. But what has been curiously absent or understated from the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire narrative is a closer examination of firefighting efforts that took place that day, lessons regarding rescue of people who were trapped, a more detailed understanding of the leadership demonstrated in the wake of the event and the legacy of the fire today—just to name a few topics. In this episode of the Leadership Under Fire Optimizing Human Performance Podcast, we hope to contribute more broadly to the historical narrative of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire. The depth of this conversation is made possible by the extensive research efforts employed by our guest in this episode, FDNY Lieutenant Matt Connor.