Dena Ali was a police officer for five years before an episode of Rescue Me showed her that women could be firefighters. Eighteen years later, she's a Battalion Chief with the Raleigh Fire Department, founder of North Carolina's statewide peer support team, Program Manager of Behavioral Health for the First Responder Center for Excellence, and author of Hope Out of Darkness: A Guide to First Responder Mental Wellness.

Recorded live at the FRCE Health and Wellness Symposium at the University of Iowa, this conversation covers the ideas at the center of her book: hope as a cognitive skill built through struggle, the surprising research on play and humor, psychological safety as the freedom to fail (with lessons the fire service can steal from NASA after Columbia), and the practical mechanics of peer support, from the kitchen table conversation after a bad call to asking someone directly whether they're thinking about suicide.

Her hardest-won stance: first responders are not victims. They carry more protective factors than most people, and the solutions in her book are human solutions, not just fire service ones.

Content note: this episode includes frank discussion of suicide. If you or someone you know is struggling, call or text 988 (US) any time.

Get the book: Hope Out of Darkness at fireengineeringbooks.com or Amazon.

First Responder Center for Excellence: firstrespondercenter.org

This episode is brought to you by SPOKE, our Founding Premier Sponsor and Film Partner. Watch the trailer at spokemovie.com

IN MEMORY OF
SENIOR FIREFIGHTER JOSH LULL
RALEIGH FIRE DEPARTMENT · RESCUE 16 · C-SHIFT
END OF WATCH APRIL 19, 2026

Firefighters are exposed to death on a scale the public never sees.

Victor Stagnaro has spent his career making sure the fire service never forgets its own, and fighting to shrink the list of names read each year.

Victor is the CEO of the National Fallen Firefighters Foundation and leads its affiliate, the First Responder Center for Excellence. Before that: 25 years with the Prince George's County Fire/EMS Department, and a relationship with the Foundation dating back to the late 1990s as incident commander for the National Fallen Firefighters Memorial Weekend.

Recorded live at the FRCE Health and Wellness Symposium at the University of Iowa, this conversation goes to the places the fire service is only now learning to talk about: cancer and suicide now recognized as line-of-duty deaths, and why the number of names honored each year is growing. The scholarships and children's grief camp that carry Fire Hero families forward. The culture conversation about risk and the cowboy mindset. What daily exposure to death does to firefighters and the people who love them. And what actually works when a department decides to build peer support, told through the story of Charleston and the FDNY.

His challenge to every firefighter at the symposium: don't just come to learn. Decide what you're going to do with it.

Support the mission:

National Fallen Firefighters Foundation: firehero.org

First Responder Center for Excellence: firstrespondercenter.org

This episode is brought to you by SPOKE, our Founding Premier Sponsor and Film Partner. Watch the trailer at spokemovie.com

"The bottom line is I care because I'm tired of losing my friends."

Chief Frank Leeb spent more than three decades in the FDNY, rising to Deputy Assistant Chief and serving as Chief of the Fire Academy, Chief of Training, and Chief of Safety before retiring in 2024. He has been a volunteer firefighter with the East Farmingdale Fire Department on Long Island since 1983. Today he leads the First Responder Center for Excellence, and he has one message for the fire service: if leadership is not protecting its people from what they cannot see coming, leadership is not doing its job.

Greg and Amy sit down with Chief Leeb at FRCE 2026 in Iowa to talk about the toll nobody puts on a recruiting poster: friends lost to suicide, careers hollowed out by PTSD, and cancer moving through firehouses in numbers the fire service is only beginning to confront. They discuss the World Health Organization's reclassification of firefighting as a Group 1 carcinogen, why the dangers of this job do not discriminate between career and volunteer, and what it actually means for a chief to protect a firefighter's blind side.

Chief Leeb is the author of the best-selling book Cornerstones of Leadership: On and Off the Fireground and co-author of 30 Fires You Must Know.

This episode discusses suicide and mental health. If you or someone you know is struggling, call or text 988 (Suicide and Crisis Lifeline), or call the Fire/EMS Helpline at 1-888-731-3473.
You are not alone.

GUEST LINKS

Cornerstones of Leadership (book): https://fireengineeringbooks.com/frank-leeb/

First Responder Center for Excellence: https://www.firstrespondercenter.org

RESOURCES MENTIONED

IARC classification of firefighting as Group 1 carcinogen (WHO, 2022): https://www.iarc.who.int

Firefighter Cancer Support Network: https://firefightercancersupport.org

Unseen Exposures is presented by SPOKE, a documentary about occupational cancer in the fire service. Learn more at https://www.spokemovie.com

Follow the show, and if this episode moved you, a rating and review helps more firefighters and families find it.

Music: White Mountains by Zambolino

Source: https://freetouse.com/music

Royalty Free Music (Free Download)