Kelly Ramsey is a former wildland firefighter and debut author of Wildfire Days, a gripping memoir about her time as the only woman on an elite hotshot crew battling megafires in California. With raw honesty, she shares the physical, emotional, and cultural toll of life on the fireline—and what it reveals about a West increasingly shaped by climate-fueled disaster. Find […]
8/16/25 Update: I totally forgot that I didn’t post all my leadership exercises! Just a couple left to go! This week, the exercise was to do the exact same exercise as last week, but now with confidence! In short, get more practice leading more people. If you need a reminder, the process is: I was able to do the exercise […]
When we talk about sustainability, the conversation so often turns into a discussion on what we have to give up — convenience, speed, comfort. People say things like, “I could never do that,” or “It’s too hard,” or “The impact of that is so small it doesn’t even matter.” But here’s what I’ve learned: after shifting my mindset, it doesn’t […]
For this week in Leadership, the exercise of the week was to lead others using empathy. The process was as follows (modified slightly for how I did it): I found this exercise to be REALLY challenging to start doing. I spent a lot of time thinking about the implications of doing the exercise: is it manipulative? Is there a reason […]
Exercise 18 of Leadership Step By Step was to have another 10 conversations with a goal of making people feel understood. Again, a script was provided and the short version is: The idea with this script is that you ask someone about their passion, then give them the space to delve into their passion and really explore what it is […]
This week, while mommy had a hair appointment, I spent a couple hours with our son at the nearby shopping mall. We had 2 hours to burn, with nothing in particular to do. And me not being particularly interested in shopping, I decided to just let my 2-year-old explore and wander the mall. One of the first things he discovered […]
For exercise 17 of Leadership Step By Step, I had to have 10 conversations using a script designed to encourage meaningful connection with others. In short, the conversation goes as follows: I found the formula to be simple and yet very effective! Asking someone about what they enjoy doing is great, but often the conversation just ends there with a […]
Exercise 16 of Leadership Step By Step was probably the most challenging one I’ve had so far. For this exercise, I had to do the exact same thing as in exercise 15, but now with something more difficult. Going through The Model and The Method itself was easy enough, but I found the actual new behaviors to be really difficult, […]
This week’s exercise from Leadership Step By Step was to build on the previous exercise (“The Model”) and to try to influence your own environment, beliefs, and emotions in order to elicit a rewarding feeling from something that you’d like to improve at, but haven’t been able to. For this exercise, Josh asked us to form groups to brainstorm new […]
It’s 6:13am. I’m in my living room laying flat on the floor on my stomach. Chest heaving up and down as I take quick, gasping breaths. My legs and arms feel like they’re burning. My forehead is slightly damp with sweat. I just finished my second set of burpees for the day, and as usual, they kick my butt. Like […]