Workforce Resilience Ignite Talks
Webinars
Short, honest sessions on the human side of wildland fire — resilience, safety culture, inclusion, and wellbeing — free to the whole community.
December Ignite Talk
YOU are part of Mission Critical Teams: Reflection, Reset, and Residue
Mission Critical Teams (MCT) are small (4–12 agents) integrated groups of indigenously trained and educated experts that leverage tools and technology to resolve rapidly emergent complex adaptive problems — in immersive but constrained (300 seconds or less) temporal environments where the consequence of failure can be a catastrophic loss.
Reflection: leaders in wildland fire need to find the language to pass on their experience and navigate between critical and routine environments. Reset: making meaning of one experience after another — including After Action Reviews that actually influence the story team members tell about themselves. Residue: you are not broken; extreme experiences leave memories, and processed well they fuel wisdom rather than harden into pain.
Presented by Dr. Preston B. Cline, co-founder and Director of Research and Education at the Mission Critical Team Institute — founded in partnership with teams from U.S. Joint Special Operations Command and the FBI Critical Incident Response Group, with a community that has grown to include NASA, military special operations, tactical law enforcement, fire, medicine, and professional sports.
The series
Recent Ignite Talks
Each talk pairs a practitioner or researcher with the questions the fire community is actually asking.
November — Containing the blaze: stories from transgender people in the fire community
To celebrate Transgender Awareness Month, the IAWF hosted a panel with Bobbie Scopa, Nicki Powers, and Dr. Mika Tosca — an honest discussion that uplifts the voices and experiences of the transgender and gender non-conforming community. Bobbie Scopa is a retired firefighter, author, and podcast host who retired from the U.S. Forest Service and BLM as Assistant Fire Director for Operations after a 45-year career. Mika Tosca is a climate scientist and faculty member at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Nicki Powers served in municipal and wildland fire in New Mexico and Colorado, leaving the service with TFLD/ICT4 qualifications.
October — Giving voice to cultural safety of Indigenous wildland firefighters in Canada
For decades, Indigenous firefighters and fire operations staff have been engaged in wildland fire suppression, formally and informally — yet little is known about their experiences. An online survey and virtual circles were conducted for individuals who self-identified as Indigenous and worked in wildland firefighting or fire operations for at least one fire season in Canada.
August — What does it mean to be a good ally? Actions towards allyship
Presented by Ellen Bledsoe, PhD (she/her), Postdoctoral Fellow, University of Regina. General terminology about inclusivity, privilege, allies, and allyship; the importance of coupling diversity initiatives with allyship; and concrete examples of how to act as an ally — both pre-emptively and in response to specific incidents.
July — Fitness and wellness for performance in wildland firefighting
Joe Sol shares their research on sustainment and maintenance throughout the fire season.
June — Wildland firefighters’ mental health and wellbeing · Nomex for Every BODY
Bria Fleming (May 6, 2021) walked through how Incidental’s products and services are developed, NFPA 1977 — the safety standard governing wildland uniforms — the state of workwear today, especially for women, custom-made garments, and DIY repair tutorials.
Earlier talks — resilience, stress, and decision-making
March 2021: learning through shared stories to evolve the fire workforce on diversity, equity, and inclusion. February 2021: the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) program — a medical, science-based approach to coping with stress and anxiety, for first responders who regularly experience critical incidents. November 2020: PTSD in wildland fire — understanding the dynamics of stress, trauma, and recovery, with nine key insights from a wildland firefighter afflicted by this nervous-system injury. October 2020: cognitive competency and Emotional Intelligence in risk decision-making.
You have chosen the hard path — a path full of extreme experiences, both good and bad, which leave memories. Processed, they serve as the fuel that moves us to wisdom and joy.
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Webinars are free — membership makes them yours
Members get the archive of recorded conference presentations alongside every live session. Questions for a panel can go to execdir@iawfonline.org.