Leadership Under Fire Leadership Under Fire

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.