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All times are Eastern

Tuesday, April 1, 2025

Coming Soon!

Wednesday, April 2, 2025
Time Accreditation 101  Advanced Accreditation Credentialing  Health and Safety  Innovation Through Technology Leadership and Management
8:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Registration and Information Desk Open
8:00 to 4:00 Exhibit Hall Open
8:30 to 9:30  Acronym City: A Newcomer’s Guide to the Accreditation Process
(Grant Thomas)
Keeping Accreditation Fresh
(Jeff Hackmeister)
Credentialing Process Explained
(Matt Jacoby)
Developing an Effective Cancer Screening Program
(Chad Brocato)
DC FEMS Whole Blood Data Integration: Using Survey123 and ArcGIS Online to ensure accountability
(Jeffrey Lenard)
Values Based Leadership and Personnel Decisions
(Greg Bulanow)
9:30 – 9:45 Break
9:45 – 10:45 Train Your Analyst for Success: Yours and Theirs!
(Thomas Breyer)
A Goal by Any Other Name: Integrating Accreditation into Organizational Strategy
(Kat Boyle)
Professional Credentialing and the Officer Continuous Quality Improvement Process
(Todd Canale)
Transforming Personal and Organizational Success Through Emotional Intelligence
(Sheryl Lynn)
GIS + WUI = WIN
(Vince Anderson)
Leadership Development for Those Who Don’t Need It
(Dan Curia)
10:45 – 11:00 Break
11:00 – 12:00 pm Strategic Planning: Fact and Fallacy
(David Farnum)
Community and Department needs for Reliability & UHU
(Michele Bischof and Jonathan Lund)
Developing a Professional Development Plan to Designation
(Tom Maloney)
Hierarchy of Contamination Control in the Fire Service
(Gavin Horn)
Boosting Operational Readiness: Automating Fitness Evaluations & Visualize Trends
(Jessica Handoko)
Toxic Leadership: Overcoming Destructive Leadership
(Bob Freytag)
12:00 – 1:15 Lunch
1:15 – 2:15 TBD Zen and the Art of Herding Cats: The Accreditation Maintenance Process from Chaos to Calm (Basic)
(Meredith Walker and Kevin Sims)
Encouraging YOU to Apply for a Designation
(Kelly Hanink)
Compassion Fatigue – Building Resilience
(BJ Merry)
High-Rise Fires: Calculating the Real Response Time
(John Celmer)
“We’d Like You to be the Chief, Chief”
(Richard Mikel)
2:15 – 2:30 Break
2:30 – 3:30 It’s overwhelming, but it can be done and did we learn a lot. CRA/SOC
(Randall Hanifen)
Writing a Defensible Outlier Policy
(Jessica LeBlanc)
Performance Management Matters: Effective Practices for Employee Development and the Overall Impact on Emergency Service Organizations
(Joshua Smith)
Firefighter Suicide Prevention, A Case Study
(Matthew Shobert)
From Hose to Doze: Analyzing Restorative Sleep in Firefighters
(Mike Binney) 
Finally, Put Your People in Their Place The Working Genius Way
(Rudy Ruiz) 
3:30 – 3:45 Break
3:45 – 4:30 Bumbling, Stumbling and Fumbling your way to Accreditation Success
(Adam Smith)
Approaching Data Analysis in the Fire Service
(Leonard Chan)
Roadmap to CTO: Professional Development for the Fire Service Instructor
(Brad French)
Retirement and the Loss of Identity
(Jordan Saas)
Preparing Your Department for AI
(Derek Bergsten and Elliot Bryla)
Is Your Fire Agency Ready to Make DEI A Priority
(Julian Velarde)

Thursday, April 3, 2025
Time Accreditation 101 Advanced Accreditation Credentialing  Community Risk Reduction Health and Safety Innovation Through Technology Leadership and Management
8:00 a.m. to 3:45 p.m. Registration and Information Desk Open
8:30 to 9:30 Why do you Respond the Way you do?
(Randy Reeder)
Look in the Mirror Before Facing the Future
(Justin Brooks and Elyse Jonker)
Credentialing Unstructured – CEMSO Measuring What Matters: Designing a New CRR-Focused Insurance Rating Methodology
(Matt Hinds-Aldrich and Sara Wood)
Well-Lead Organizations, Well-Run Incidents, Well-Grounded Lives: The Key to Healthy and Well Employees
(John Oates)
Low-Cost, Low-Code Solutions for Data Analysis and Business Process Improvement
(Jessica LeBland and John Morrison)
Leadership Through Upstream Thinking
(Kristopher Blume)
9:30 – 9:45 Break
9:45 – 10:45 Are you sure you want to do this? Civilians in the Fire Service
(Bryan Norris)
Outlier Analysis – Are we really measuring what we think we are?
(Blake Boyd)
Credentialing Unstructured – CTO Performative CRR: Bridging the Gap Between Outputs and Outcomes
(Landon Churchill and Karen Berard-Reed)
UPSIDE: Building Better After Trauma
(Jason Corthell)
Innovation through Technology; Planning for Success
(Dan Munsey and Adam Panos)
Hiring for Diversity: Retooling the Fire Service Hiring Process
(Michael Cunningham and Bill Johnson)
10:45 – 11:00 Break 
11:00 – 12:00 pm The Art of Herding Cats (Advanced)
(Meredith Walker and Kevin Sims)
Inheriting Legacy Accreditation Work: Sustaining Accreditation Through Strategic Management and Planning
(Mary Kupchenko-Hill and Christopher Koch)
Credentialing Unstructured – FM A Call to Fire Service Leaders to Adopt a Proactive, Community Risk Reduction Mindset
(Kelly Hanink)
Self-Command: A New Model for Firefighter Behavioral Health
(Jessica Ward)
Leveraging AI and Machine Learning to Transform Emergency Services
(Scott Ramey)
Empowering for Organizational Success
(Don Lombardi and Michael Mulcahy)
12:00 – 1:15 Lunch
1:15 – 2:15 Understanding the Vulnerability Assessment Program
(David Wiklanski)
Accreditation and Department Culture: The Journey of Change
(Jake Rhoades)
Credentialing Unstructured – FO Maintaining Momentum in Wildfire Risk Management after Community Tragedy
(Holger Durre and Conrad Jackson)
How Do We Avoid the Edge?
(John Sullivan and Carl Niedner)
“Data-Driven” Leads to Great Decisions – Or Does It?
(Michael Calderazzo)
Bad Leaders, Inherited Teams, and the Wrong People in the Right Positions
(Calen Maningas)
2:15 – 2:30 Break
2:30 – 3:30 Preparing for a CFAI Site Visit
(Richard Merrell)
The Firefighter Rescue Survey: The Future of Data Collection
(Jonah Smith)
Credentialing Unstructured – FESA Community Risk Reduction, Planning, and Preparedness with NFPA 3000
(Thomas Breyer and Jonathan Oates)
The Chief’s Guide to Stress Zones: Effective Management Strategies
(Michael Cunningham and Bita Shahidi)
Leveraging Multiple Data Sources to Maximize Potential
(Jessica Handoko)
Diversity of Fire Service Leadership Styles
(Khalilah Yancey and Gary Menard)
3:30 – 3:45 Break
3:45 – 4:30 A Journey in Accreditation
(Don Lombardi)
Letting Real Data Objectively Measure Risk – Still Alarms are High Risk?
(Michele Bischoff and Jonathan Lund)
Credentialing Unstructured – PIO Assessing Motor Vehicle Collision Risk
(Leonard Chan)
Health and Wellness in the Fire Service
(Willie Williams)
Drones in Public Safety
(Wayne Bailey)
Normalization of Deviance
(Grant Tinker)
Friday, April 4, 2025
Time Accreditation  Community Risk Reduction Health and Safety Leadership and Management
7:45 a.m. to 9:30 a.m. Registration and Information Desk Open
8:00 to 9:00 Annual Compliance Report You Can’t Spell CRR Without Naloxone: Why EMS-Focused CRR Programs Must Lead the Way in Combating the Opioid Epidemic
(Christopher Roush)
Buy a New Recliner – A Firefighter’s Cancer Journey
(Brian Dean)
Six Steps to Becoming a Critical Decision Maker
(Michael Barakey)
9:00 to 9:15 Break
9:15 to 10:15 Peer Assessment Update Revolutionizing Emergency Response: How Whole Blood and Strategic Partnerships are Shaping DC’s Fight Against Violent Crime
(Holly O’Byrne)
Mental Health First Aid
(Claudia Fernandez)
“The Office” – Llessons in (not) Planning for Succession
(Alan Butsch)
10:15 to 10:30 Break
10:30 to 11:30 CFAI 11the Edition Model Update
(Jim White and Jerry Nulliner)
CONECT – Community Paramedicine/Mobile Integrated Health
(Lisa Walker)
CO Poisoning- EMS Patients and YOU!
(Phil Davis)
Limits to Command and Control: Leadership Lessons Command and Control will not Teach You.
(Calen Maningas)