What do you do?
I’m a federal emergency manager.
How did you find your way into federal service? Did you always want to join up?
I joined the active army at age 17. Eventually transitioned into Army Reserves and civil service for the Reserves. While in the Reserves I sought higher education in emergency management, retired from the reserve military and left DoD civil service for the DHS role I currently hold. I have served this nation in some capacity since 1990.
During disasters we use FQS, Federal Qualification System. Under FQS we have Incident management (IM) roles and Incident Support (IS)roles. In my day job I help support states in our region prepare for disaster (think: training and exercises). When I’m on disasters, my roles for IM and IS are both in logistics – I am a qualified logistic supply chain manager and I am working towards becoming a qualified transportation lead. So many of the full time employees in the agency I work for have multiple hats.
What does this work mean to you? Why is it important to you, personally?
This job means I get to help people. Period. It’s satisfying to know that the teams I work with are doing their best to lift up and support communities impacted by disasters. When I was a little girl, my mother’s house burned to the ground — no one was hurt but everything was lost. The outpouring of help from neighbors and family has stayed with me my entire life, and I have always wanted to be able to help the next person in the same way my family was helped.
What should be important about this work to Americans? Why does it matter?
I do not believe that the majority of people in our nation have a solid understanding of what the agency I work for does. When I took the oath of office for this job I genuinely didn’t know the scope of work from this agency. I am in awe of how many people here have hands on experience and working knowledge of the varying departments – the flexibility of my colleagues to adapt under duress is commendable! All that to say Americans look for help when they have gone through something catastrophic, and the agency I work for are the first to answer that call when are needed.
What does all of this chaos and dysfunction mean to you? Do you have a sense of how it’s all going to impact your work and your mission?
Our work/mission is changing rapidly (daily). Just recently, an Executive Order – Achieving Efficiency Through State and Local Preparedness – was signed, and our workforce has to adjust focus to ensure we are complying with it. I think some change is good, to be clear, but I think the sheer volume that is changing seems to be driven by malice. I am not a “parasite”, none of my team deserves the anger directed towards them. In the past few weeks we’ve seen colleagues fired, then reinstated. We have seen all things related to diversity eliminated. We’ve been ostracized by the media and the president of the United States and we’ve persevered.
GOLIKEHELLMACHINE 