Ah, sweet irony. Chief Mary Beth Michos still chuckles a bit, remembering how her dad refused to allow her to study engineering in college, which was what she wanted to do when she graduated from high school in the 1960s.

“My father was a little concerned about investing in a college education for a daughter,” says Michos. “He said I could be a nurse, a beautician or just get married. He felt that once I got married, I'd never work.”

And so she began her career as a critical-care nurse in hospitals in New York and New Jersey. Although her career path was filled with other disappointments and challenges, Michos nevertheless broke many traditional concepts of what women can and can't do. Today, Michos leads the Prince William County (Va.) Department of Fire & Rescue, a full-function paid fire and EMS department with 321 personnel, and works with 12 volunteer companies that have a combined membership of 750.

In the male-dominated world of the fire service, she is not only one of the few women to lead a paid metropolitan department as chief, she is Fire Chief Magazine's 2003 Career Fire Chief of the Year, the first woman to earn that distinction. She is also the winner of the International Association of Fire Chiefs 2003 James O. Page EMS award, the highest fire and rescue service award for EMS leadership and achievement.

Unexpected change

Her father's interference was only the first of what she philosophically calls “little unanticipated changes in direction” that ultimately led to a satisfying career in the fire service. By the way, she did marry and raised a daughter, now 33 years old, but Michos never quit working. “I used to always tease my dad about that,” she says. “I'd say, ‘So, when is this “never work” bit gonna start?’”

After moving to the Maryland area with her husband in 1967, Michos took a nursing job at the National Institutes of Health. Her passion was in cardiac care, but she was assigned to the pediatric floor. To stay involved in cardiac care, Michos volunteered with the American Heart Association and eventually found herself hired as head critical-care nurse for the Montgomery County AHA's Heartmobile, one of the nation's first mobile coronary-care units. In that role, she developed the first Advanced Life Support training programs for pre-hospital providers in the Maryland and mid-Atlantic area.

When the AHA phased out the Heartmobile, the Montgomery County Department of Fire & Rescue decided to phase in a mobile intensive-care unit and paramedics, and Michos took what she expected to be a one-year detour from nursing to develop the fire department's EMS program. But again, destiny had other plans. “I fell in love with the fire service in that year,” she says, “and I decided that's really where I wanted to spend my professional life.”

Michos rose through the department's ranks to the position of assistant chief in charge of EMS services and special operations. As EMS chief, she established the paramedic program and was responsible for supervising and training 800 career and 400 volunteers for the county's 19 fire and rescue corporations. That responsibility included implementing ALS training and introducing mobile intensive-care units to the department. She also actively participated in the development of Maryland's widely recognized statewide EMS and trauma system.

As Montgomery County's special ops chief, Michos coordinated the activities of several specialty teams, including the hazmat team, collapse-rescue team (a FEMA US&R team), underwater rescue team, vehicle extrication team and special evacuations team. In the case of the hazmat team, says Leslie Adams, a retired deputy fire chief for Montgomery County, Michos was a charter and active member with a “hands-on, do-as-I-do approach to leadership.”

Bedroom to the capital

Michos became chief of Prince William County's Department of Fire & Rescue in December 1994. The department now protects a population of about 310,000 in a suburb 25 miles south of Washington, D.C. The area was one of several Washington-area suburbs terrorized for three weeks last October by sniper shootings.

“As a whole, the fire department wasn't very involved in the shootings,” Michos says, “except there was a threat to our safety as well as everybody else's.” One of the fatal shootings did take place in Michos' jurisdiction, and John Allen Mohammed, one of the two men charged with the shootings, is now jailed there awaiting trial.

Because it serves a bedroom community to the nation's capital, her department also responded for five days to the Sept. 11 attack on the Pentagon and grieved for many friends and neighbors killed that day. Prince William County lost 23 people on Sept. 11, Michos says, more than any other community in the Washington, D.C., area.

Since that time, millions of dollars in federal funding have been distributed to all the departments in the greater Washington area to beef up their preparedness for terrorist attacks. The threat of terrorism has escalated demands on Michos' department, which is already challenged by rapid growth. In fact, the fire department has doubled in size since she came on board.

“Because we are part of the greater Washington area, there's great expectation on all of us to have quite an extensive level of preparedness,” Michos says. “So a lot of federal money is coming our way that we're trying to take advantage of. All of it puts a demand on a system that already had a lot of demands on it.”

Pub-ed programs

Meanwhile, Michos has developed life safety education programs to address the everyday hazards that take lives in her community and her department, such as heart attacks, fires and accidents.

In the five years Michos chaired the county's Operation Heartbeat program, the committee completed a community survey and developed a “chain of survival” plan for the county. The fire department partnered with local libraries to distribute CPR kits to the community and was the driving force behind an initiative to place AEDs in all county facilities. The IAFC's EMS Section awarded the program the 2002 Heart Safe Community Award.

As for firefighter health, the Prince William County Department of Fire & Rescue was the first in the nation to establish a fixed Candidate Physical Agility Testing center, in compliance with a joint program established by the IAFC and the International Association of Fire Fighters.

To improve community life safety education, the department established a citizens academy and alumni group five years ago. The academy takes citizens and community leaders through an eight-week training program. “There is a week where we dress them up [in turnout gear] and put them in a [fire] building,” says Michos. “They learn a lot about safety, but they also learn a lot about the fire service so that they, as citizens, can provide input to us on what they think we should be doing for them.”

In September, the department started its latest project, a high school cadet program. Fifteen juniors from local high schools are taking part in the program to receive EMS and firefighter training with the goal of graduating from high school as certified EMTs and Firefighter IIs.

National leadership

Michos certainly has contributed her share of leadership on the national and regional landscape as well, says Gary S. Ludwig, a board member of the IAFC EMS Section, which nominated Michos for Career Fire Chief of the Year. After Michos' name came up in the section meeting, there was no further discussion about whom to nominate.

“The decision was unanimous,” says Ludwig. “We in the EMS Section have worked closely with her, and we are well aware of her accomplishments through the years.”

For example, when Michos chaired the IAFC EMS Section from 1992 to 1996, she succeeded in winning the section a seat on the IAFC Board of Directors, and she implemented the James O. Page EMS Award. She also established an EMS Section in the National Fire Protection Association.

A member of the NFPA Hazardous Materials Committee, Michos chaired the subcommittee on EMS Response to Hazardous Materials Incidents, which developed NFPA 473, EMS Response to Hazardous Materials Incidents. She currently serves on the IAFC Hazardous Materials Committee.

In 1992, Michos was elected to the IAFC seat on the National Registry of Emergency Medical Technicians board of directors. She is vice chairman of the EMT Registry's board and will become its chair in 2004, the first fire chief to hold that position.

Although she never emphasizes the gender issue, Michos doesn't hesitate to network with other women in the fire service. She was among a handful of women who founded the IAFC's Women Chief Officers Section. “The purpose was to allow us to network among ourselves, but also to help nurture future leadership, especially among women in the fire service,” Michos says.

Michos also has served in leadership roles for the American Heart Association, in which she has been active for more than 30 years. She has been in many leadership positions on local and regional boards of directors for the AHA over the years. Currently, she's on the AHA's Metropolitan Washington Regional Board of Directors, where she continues to identify opportunities for the AHA and the fire service to work together. She also has been active in the local Rotary Club and currently heads Prince William County's United Way campaign.

Where credit is due

Like most successful leaders, Michos has found mentors who inspired her and shaped many of her philosophies along the way.

Of Dave Gratz, director of Montgomery County Fire & Rescue and former IAFC president, she says, “He instilled in me the love of the fire service and fire service ethics”; of Warren E. Isman, also a Montgomery County director and former IAFC president, Michos says, “He exposed me to the fact that there was a national fire service and we needed to make sure that we contributed to the big picture as much as we benefited from being a part of the fire service”; and of Les Adams, also of Montgomery County, she says, “He gave me a lot of good advice at different points in my career.”

Michos credits the people in her department and the county government for her award as Career Chief of the Year, saying their response has been overwhelming:

“I tell people I wouldn't be Chief of the Year unless I had a great department and unless I worked for a government that provided an environment where we could grow. It's a very nurturing environment here…. I really couldn't think of a better place to be fire chief than Prince William County.”

LESSONS SHARED

Every good chief learns some management lessons the hard way, and with 30 years of service, Michos is no exception. Asked what lessons learned she might pass along to other chiefs, she offers these:

Don't assume you know why someone is doing something or what they want. “Sometimes I try to guess what somebody wants or why they are doing something, and I've been wrong. So now I always ask people where they're coming from. That keeps me from making mistakes and assuming things that will get me into trouble.”

In periods of change, don't forget to pay attention to the human beings involved. “The fire service is in a time of great change, and we're having to face a lot of issues because of Sept. 11. Whenever you're dealing with change, remember that it's all very personal to the people involved. Sometimes we get caught up in the logistics and we forget to deal with the people aspects. But if change is going to be effective, we have to deal with the human issues.”

Always show a positive attitude. “Reflecting a positive attitude is important. You need to keep positive, even when things are getting you down. Because everybody looks up to the chief, and if the chief's not happy, nobody else is going to be happy.”

Be grateful. “Sometimes I don't think we realize how lucky we are to be part of the fire service. We get caught up with how demanding it is on our time and all the other stresses, but if we just sit back and take stock, we often realize how fortunate we are to be where we are.”