CNN
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Standing in entrance of a ruined warehouse in tornado-ravaged Marietta, Oklahoma, FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell was stuffed with questions.

“Have you ever gotten any sleep but?” she requested the mayor.

To the sheriff: “Your house is okay? Your loved ones?”

“Do you’ve any questions for me?” she prompted one other official.

It’s a mode emblematic of Criswell’s angle towards catastrophe aid: On the bottom on this small rural group following a devastating EF-4 twister, her first precedence is the individuals.

After a wave of lethal tornados struck Oklahoma, CNN joined Criswell for an unique behind-the-scenes have a look at how she and her company method pure disasters.

Her message to officers is easy: “You don’t have to do that alone.”

The response from native leaders and survivors alike is uniformly one in every of gratitude that the nation’s prime emergency response official got here to their city to see the injury and listen to their tales firsthand.

However Criswell shrugged off the reward and thanks.

“That is what I do,” she mentioned.

Lengthy earlier than she turned the administrator of the Federal Emergency Administration Company, Criswell received her begin as a firefighter in Aurora, Colorado — simply the sixth girl to carry that job.

“I by no means thought I used to be going to be a firefighter,” she informed CNN in an interview. “That wasn’t on my checklist of issues to do.”

On the time, Criswell was going via a divorce and — juggling school tuition with being a single mom to 2 sons — determined to hitch the Colorado Air Nationwide Guard to assist make ends meet. Given a alternative between loading bombs or combating fires, she selected the latter.

“The firefighters had been having a variety of enjoyable and I mentioned, ‘I’ll give {that a} shot,’” she mentioned with a smile. “I cherished it, I used to be good at it, and I mentioned, ‘I’m going to come back again and that is the job that I’m going to do.’”

It’s a job Criswell would do for greater than twenty years, together with two abroad deployments to Kuwait and Qatar after 9/11. Alongside the best way, she graduated from school, earned two grasp’s levels, and finally rose to guide Aurora’s workplace of emergency administration, the place she labored to accommodate evacuees and reunify households displaced by Hurricane Katrina.

She joined FEMA in the course of the Obama administration, serving to to supervise the company’s response to pure disasters throughout the nation. In 2019, she turned the primary girl to guide New York Metropolis’s Emergency Administration Division, the place — lower than a 12 months into the job — she helped navigate the town via the darkest days of the coronavirus pandemic.

Now, as FEMA’s prime official, Criswell hopes her unorthodox profession path will encourage others to grab alternatives and take skilled dangers.

“You will have to have the ability to enable the journey to assist information you alongside the best way,” she mentioned. “Have the boldness in your self, take the private danger if crucial, and simply do the work to get to the extent that you simply wish to get to.”

When Criswell was unanimously confirmed as FEMA’s twelfth administrator — turning into the primary girl to carry that place — shattering a glass ceiling wasn’t at entrance of thoughts.

“After I first was requested to come back in and do that job, I didn’t actually give it some thought,” she admittted.

That modified in her first week on the job.

“One among my youthful feminine staff had come as much as me after a gathering and she or he mentioned, ‘You understand, a 12 months in the past, there have been zero girls in my chain of command between me and the president of the US,’” Criswell mentioned. “’Now there are 5.’ And so what it informed me is, individuals discover, proper?”

Criswell is aware of from expertise the obstacles girls can face in her line of labor.

“As I used to be arising in my profession, it was at all times a stability between demonstrating your confidence and your competence with being known as the ‘B phrase,’” she mentioned, acknowledging that time period was directed at her “many instances” over her profession.

“It’s important to consider in your self that you simply deserve a seat at that desk, that you simply deserve your voice to be heard,” she mentioned.

Now that she’s a lady in a serious management position within the federal authorities, Criswell makes use of her place to assist elevate the voices of the ladies beneath her.

“I like to observe how girls are both voicing their opinions, or I can possibly sense in the event that they’re afraid to voice their opinions and assist encourage them,” she informed CNN. “And when anyone says one thing, I’ll instantly step in and say, ‘nicely, that’s a very superb thought,’ proper? In giving that validation on the time, I believe it’s vital, particularly because the chief within the room, to at all times be observant concerning the dynamics of what’s taking place inside that dialog.”

That dynamic is already beginning to change — Criswell’s first assembly in Oklahoma, with state emergency administration leaders and regional FEMA officers, was led totally by girls.

In three years as administrator, Criswell has logged greater than 100,000 miles of journey, visiting catastrophe zones in each nook of the US.

Criswell mentioned seeing the devastation firsthand is critically vital to the selections she makes when figuring out FEMA’s response.

“It helps me eliminate the crimson tape,” she mentioned. “It helps me break down paperwork to be able to be sure that it’s greater than numbers — it’s individuals.”

Criswell emphasizes the significance of taking the time to listen to immediately from victims. In any other case, she mentioned, “you’ll be able to’t really feel that emotion, you’ll be able to’t really feel the heartache.”

It additionally permits her to get face time with officers at each degree. In Oklahoma, Criswell made a degree of assembly with first responders, native leaders, state emergency administration officers, and representatives from affected tribal nations.

Criswell is aware of that catastrophe aid transcends occasion, an method that has earned her respect and appreciation from throughout the political spectrum.

“When there’s a catastrophe and there’s individuals in want, we’re all People,” Oklahoma’s Republican Gov. Kevin Stitt informed CNN shortly after showing with Criswell at a information convention. “And that’s, I believe, the administrator’s angle. These are federal businesses that now we have to work with no matter who’s within the White Home.”

Criswell agrees.

“This type of a partnership, that is completely crucial to verify we deliver the appropriate individuals into these communities to assist with their particular wants,” she mentioned.

Shaking the governor’s hand, she added, “We might be in contact – you’ve my quantity.”

At FEMA headquarters in Washington, DC, the company’s motto is prominently displayed on the wall: “Serving to individuals earlier than, throughout, and after disasters.”

It’s a mission assertion Criswell has taken to coronary heart. Coming into the job, she mentioned, “I needed to make it possible for we put individuals first.”

As a former metropolis emergency administration director, Criswell knew all-too-well FEMA’s popularity for bureaucratic crimson tape and convoluted aid packages that made it more durable to get assist to individuals who wanted it.

“We’re an company that offers with danger day by day – that’s the character of what we do, but in the case of our insurance policies, we are able to typically be a bit bit extra danger averse,” she says. “I needed to get away from that. I needed us to actually perceive what it meant to place individuals first.”

Her resolution was to pay attention.

“I went to completely different open disasters and listened to our individuals, listened to governors, listened to precise people who had been impacted about what their obstacles had been,” Criswell mentioned. “After which we had been capable of tackle these by making adjustments.”

The end result was the most sweeping reforms to the FEMA’s catastrophe help packages in twenty years.

The adjustments, which went into impact in March, embrace:

Criswell believes the adjustments might be transformational and make it simpler for FEMA to have a right away impression on the bottom.

“We will really assist individuals on their highway to restoration in a means that is smart,” she mentioned, “as an alternative of being so restricted by among the rules that now we have.”

That concentrate on serving to individuals extends to her workers as nicely. Recognizing the toll that responding to a seemingly limitless stream of pure disasters can have on her workforce’s psychological well being, Criswell carried out a “wellness room” simply outdoors FEMA HQ’s nerve heart — full with snug chairs and a soothing livestream of birds at a feeder.

“It is a spot the place they will come take a timeout,” she mentioned. “We now have to have the ability to put money into our staff and now we have to have the ability to give them, not simply the assist, however the permission to acknowledge after they want a break.”

‘Grandma Cookie’

To her workers, she’s “Administrator Criswell.” However to her household, she’s recognized by a distinct title.

“I’m affectionately generally known as ‘Grandma Cookie,’” she admitted

Regardless of a profession stuffed with demanding jobs, Criswell has by no means overpassed her different job: that of a mother to 2 grown sons and grandmother of three.

It hasn’t come with out sacrifices, between a number of deployments and fixed journey to completely different catastrophe zones. However when Criswell appeared earlier than Congress for her affirmation listening to, her sons had been by her facet.

“Once they had been with me that day and you could possibly see how proud they had been and the way profitable they’ve each turn out to be,” she mentioned, “it actually simply gave me a very heat feeling as a mom.”