Nicole Phillips Has Always Been Putting Out Fires

Agreeing to a challenge led this former stay-at-home mom to enter her destined career: firefighting.
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Firefighter Nicole Phillips with her three kids.

Photo by Jeremy Kramer

Second Careers

From: Stay-at-home Mom
To: Firefighter

Nicole Phillips is a strong believer in the power of saying yes. That one word has led her through one of the most significant changes of her life.

Just three years ago, Phillips was a 38-year-old stay-at-home mom to her three elementary-age children. An ultramarathon runner and fitness enthusiast, she taught spin and strength classes for TriHealth’s wellness division part-time to get out of the house.

When TriHealth requested that she instruct a contract bootcamp for local firefighters, she was resistant at first—spending so much time together at the station, she expected to encounter a close-knit but closed-off group of men she wouldn’t fit in with. “Firefighters can be a difficult group to integrate into—they work together for 24 to 48 hours at a time,” she says. “When you spend that kind of time with somebody, they don’t really let people in too well.”

Reluctantly, she said yes. What she didn’t expect was to be welcomed with open arms, to understand and take part in their jokes, and to feel like part of their team. “I don’t know if I was just always meant for this and I found it really late or what, but I integrated with those crews really quickly.”

Halfway through the bootcamp, the fire chief asked if they could extend her contract through the end of the year. With confidence this time, she said yes. Soon after extending the contract, when the fire chief pulled her aside and asked if she would ever consider pursuing a full-time career in firefighting, in her head she enthusiastically agreed, yes! After a couple of weeks to consider, she was all in. “I was never meant to stay at home and be a full-time mom forever,” says Phillips. “It was great when my kids were little, but I knew that I always wanted more.”

With a glowing recommendation from the chief, Phillips joined the fire academy at Great Oaks’s Scarlet Oaks campus. The transition was rewarding, but difficult—aside from the grueling workload, her young children couldn’t quite understand what was going on. “My kids didn’t know anything besides myself being home with them, so when I went to Scarlet Oaks, it was class from 7 a.m. to 4 or 5 p.m., not to mention study time at home. I would wake up at 4 in the morning to do it so I didn’t have to study while they were awake,” she says.

By March 2023, Phillips secured a job as a firefighter at the Anderson Township fire department. She is one of only two female firefighters at her station, a fact that’s inspired her to encourage girls and women of all ages to follow in her footsteps. “People still don’t expect to see a female on the crew,” she says.

Although she’s worked as a full-time firefighter for nearly two years now, Phillips still makes a point to say yes to her new life each and every day. “I have what it takes to wake up and say, ‘I’m not going to quit today,’ even if it’s a bad day,” she says. “You have to be fully committed, to keep saying yes a whole bunch of times, to remember what your goal is and why you started.”

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