Colorado has stopped calling wildfire a season and started calling it a year-round condition. At the same time, it’s facing that threat with a firefighter workforce that’s shrinking. Serve Colorado and the Colorado National Guard got together to bring an innovative solution to the table: the first program in the country to let a Guard member serve simultaneously as an AmeriCorps member on a wildfire mitigation crew.

Serve Colorado Executive Director John Kelly and Colorado National Guard Director of Homeland Defense and Resilience Col. Thomas Banker join us to discuss how two service organizations that had never worked together built a joint crew in Steamboat Springs, and why the model is already spreading beyond wildfire into critical infrastructure and cyber resilience.

John Kelly is executive director of Serve Colorado. He previously worked on the founding team of the civic-tech startup Generous, and he also served on the White House Domestic Policy Council. He was also deputy chief of staff at the Corporation for National and Community Service.

Col. Thomas Banker is director of homeland defense and resilience for the Colorado National Guard. He oversees the statewide collaboration and coordination of critical infrastructure and cyber defense activities with civilian, public, and private partners.

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