Katie Fisher

I think it's the trust. It's making myself available, letting people know that I am authentic, I'm intentional, and I don't use those buzzwords just to use them. Cops can smell bullshit a mile away, so being able to recognize that I need to enter every conversation, I'm never the smartest person in the room, nor do I want to be. I want to be collaborative, I want to be communicative, and I want to make sure that that is known from the moment I walk through the door. A lot of people, we don't know each other, so I really have to be mindful and truly intentional when I walk into those spaces, because they are the subject matter experts. I am not. And so hearing from them, their perspective, their histories, their realities, their challenges, and really absorbing that and taking that to heart and acknowledging that as part of the effort that we have continually to tell their story, is very important. There's a lot of emotional intelligence that goes into this line of work. It's not just the training and the repetition, it's also the EQ, and being mindful of that, in every conversation, every day is invaluable.

This is the best job in the whole world, love it every day, and there will be tough days, but those are also some of the most rewarding because you learn so much there. And the life skills that you get here are going to manifest in any job elsewhere that you may have at any point in your life. But you're never going to have something as profound as something as prolific, and something as powerful as you would if you were to come into law enforcement. I would also say that as much as the challenges have been difficult, I reflect on them now, and I think how grateful I am to have had those experiences, because I have learned so much from them, and I have taken those and turned them not from a negative, but something into a positive, where I know now that I, one, as a leader, would never want to instill that in a team that I am leading, but also, I know now how that made me feel, and I would never want somebody else to feel that way. So if I am recognizing that perhaps we're in a conversation, or an incident, or an event, we're going down that path, I know to take a step back, to pivot, and to reassess.

I think it's to probably empower more women to be in positions of leadership. I am in a very coveted spot right now, and I don't take that for granted. We make up less than 10% of the profession in general, and so really encouraging more women to take those leaps of faith, take those leadership roles, and lean into them. There is no space in any capacity in the world for mean girls in spots in this profession or in positions of leadership. Finding the right people to make sure that they really know that they have opportunities to be able to have a voice, have a seat at the table, and not just have a seat at the table, but have a seat at the head of the table is so important. I really want to encourage and empower people on my team who are females, people in the department who are females, to see that they, beyond their scope of what they are in right now, to see their future, and to really think that not just, maybe I can do it, but I will do it. I also come from a background with a family of public servants, and you have to have a servant's heart to work in public safety and in really any first responder capacity. This belief in higher education is not just something I preach, it's something I practice.