Jeanie Pharis, RPL, ENP, MS

I attribute my success to perseverance, adaptability, teamwork, and a lifelong commitment to learning and growth in the public safety field. I believe strong leadership comes from listening to others, staying open to new perspectives, and continuously striving to improve both personally and professionally. With over 30 years in emergency communications, my journey has been rooted in service, leadership development, and a commitment to supporting those who work in high-stress environments.

Somebody told me one time that if you want to move up, then you have to be willing to make a change. That advice really stuck with me because after 20 years in my previous position, things had become stagnant and there was no place to go. That push to be willing to make a change is what led me to take the leap to the Air Force base and eventually to my current director role. I also believe that you can learn something from everybody you encounter, good or bad. I've taken lessons from a lot of different people throughout my career, and I think there were a lot of places where I took something from somebody.

I think the biggest thing is, find some piece of yourself that you have right now and hang on to it the entire time. Don't lose that piece, because this career will consume you, and one day you're gonna wake up and be like, who am I and what happened? So find something to ground yourself right off the bat and hang on to that piece of you as you move through. You gotta take care of you, and we've never started that take care of you early enough as an industry. Women just worked and worked and worked. I mean, men do too, to an extent, but women have a different emotional need, and we can kind of lose ourselves. So yeah, hang on to that piece of yourself.

I feel like our industry deserves to be pushed up a little higher for what it is. We're not executives in billion-dollar companies, but we are women in a very emotionally stressful and strenuous type of position. The field of public safety and responders in general could use a little bit more visibility and recognition. We have issues with getting federal funding for 911 because nobody sees the industry really in front of them. They see police officers and fire providers and those types of things that are out front, and so our battle is a little tougher. I feel like I'd like to lift our industry up because then it helps me with my push for leadership and leadership well-being. One of the biggest challenges is that there's not really safe places for anybody in leadership. You have to be very careful what you say or what you do. I can't comment on things because of my position. I can't get involved in conversations or debates. There's a lot of frustrations, but I can't openly vent those because it's unprofessional. People are waiting for you to screw up. That's why I'm working to create safe spaces for leaders and developing better leadership training that addresses the emotional toll and teaches people how to take care of themselves.

Service and taking care of people are at the core of what I do. I believe in people first, as far as your employees first. I'm strong on their mental health and tell them, don't become me. I understand my employees because I started as a dispatcher and moved up, so I understand their emotions, what they're going through, their challenges. What keeps me grounded is my family and my husband, who is very supportive of me, and knowing that I've built a team here that supports what we're doing so that I can take off a few days and not feel like the place is going to burn to the ground. Outside of work, my farm life with my husband and our animals provides balance. We have chickens and baby pigs, and that pretty much consumes most of my time. It's a different type of work that helps me decompress from the high-intensity nature of emergency communications.