Rod Ammon: Welcome to the CFITrainer.Net podcast. We've got something a little different for you today. Our topic is mentorship and we're going to look at it from both perspectives as a mentor and as a person being mentored. With us to discuss this important aspect of fire investigator growth and professional development is Steve Avato. He's an IAAI-CFI. He retired as an ATF Supervisory Special Agent CFI in 2016 after 27 years with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. At ATF he held numerous fire and explosion related specialty positions, including operational, training, and supervisory roles in arson and explosive investigative groups as the ATF National Response Team Supervisor and in the ATF Certified Fire Investigator Program. He then served as a Fire Marshal Captain with the Loudoun County Virginia Fire Marshal's Office, retiring from that position in 2022. Mr. Avato was selected as the IAAI Fire Investigator of the Year in 2000 for his investigation of a double fatal fire in Southeastern Pennsylvania. He now dedicates his time to mentoring and educating fire investigators. Steve, it's great to talk to you. We've known each other for a long time. You've always been supportive of all we do, and you've been an expert on several of the CFITrainer.net modules. We appreciate what you do and we're grateful for your time and insight.

Steve Avato: Thank you, and it's been a pleasure. And as you mentioned in the intro, part of I believe my mission and life, if you would, to give back to the fire investigation community and the fire investigators.

Rod Ammon: Well, I'm sure a lot of people appreciate that. So mentorship, it's this word we hear about, but I believe for a lot of people, they think about it or they know it as a good idea, but it's not a concrete concept or a simple for them to make happen. In the fire investigation context, what do we mean when we say mentorship?

Steve Avato: Well, obviously it is working with more experienced or more educated fire investigators and essentially just absorbing whatever knowledge and information they have to offer. A lot of times it doesn't have to be a formally established relationship of mentor/mentee if you would, but it's a simple sharing of information and knowledge.

Rod Ammon: So who's mentorship most for?

Steve Avato: I believe that you can't mentor someone without being mentored yourself. So mentoring is for everyone in the fire investigation community. It doesn't end at a certain point in your career, it continues throughout your career. I believe there's times still even in my retirement where I'm learning from other investigators in the field, whenever I go out and do presentations, I'm always learning. So essentially there's always somebody still mentoring me as I offer what mentoring I can to newer fire investigators. But clearly the ones that would benefit probably most from a good mentorship relationship would be newer fire investigators. I used to say young fire investigators, but the fire investigation field tends to attract sometimes more experienced fire service personnel, at least in the public sector. Usually you've been in the fire service for a few years before you transition into fire investigation. So, again, mentorship essentially can be a career long process.

Rod Ammon: Okay. What does it look like in fire investigation to mentorship itself? I think about apprenticeship in a lot of the trades, but what does mentorship look like in fire investigation?

Steve Avato: Sure. Again, the term apprenticeship at some point in the fire investigation community got a little bit of a bad rap because of mistakes that were not corrected but passed on to newer fire investigators. For a long time the way you were educated in the fire investigation field is essentially working with or under the tutelage of a more experienced fire investigator. And in a lot of ways, that is the way almost every profession becomes accomplished. You work with a senior individual, whether it's in the sciences, say forensic sciences, you're assigned to work in a laboratory, say doing fire debris analysis. Typically, you're working with a more experienced fire debris chemist. And it's really no different even today in the fire investigation field, generally you're going to be working or seeking the advice from someone who is more experienced in fire investigation. Not every department has the luxury of having a large staff. You may be the only individual in your department that's doing fire investigation, but it doesn't mean you can't have mentors in other departments or other agencies or out in the field. So essentially what it looks like is what it has always looked like is working under the tutelage of a more senior investigator.

Rod Ammon: Okay. Are there formal programs that people can look for?

Steve Avato: Yes. Well, let's put it this way, it depends on your department. When I talk about mentorship, generally there's three pieces to it in the ideal world, I see, first of all, the mentor, the senior investigator has to be willing to share their knowledge, time, and information. Then there is of course, the person being mentored, the mentee if you would. And then there's also the organization itself that either one or both of them belong to. The organization has to foster or encourage mentorship either through a formalized field training officer program or some other type of relationship with other departments where they share that information and knowledge.

Rod Ammon: Okay. So I'm guessing that a lot of the audience doesn't have a formal situation set up. There's so many demands on fire investigators and fire departments now. Informally, can you talk a little bit about how someone can make that happen?

Steve Avato: Sure. I think it's incumbent upon any newer fire investigator to be active in their own education. They need to reach out to the departments in their areas, the agencies around them, if they have the good fortune of being in an area where the ATF, and I'm partial to that program, where the ATF has a certified fire investigator located. That's a good resource to look out to or look out for, I'm sorry, or to reach out to. You don't have to have a large department. Every department essentially has neighbors around them and most departments, most investigators seek out relationships with nearby coworkers in the fire investigation field. So it doesn't have to be a formal relationship, it can be more informal where the newer investigator seeks out the experience of the older investigator, but again, it has to be at least a two-way street there. The newer investigator has to become active in their own education and seek out those people in their regions. I've been lucky in some ways in presentations that I've done around the country. I've had people who've sat in my classes or who have seen me in the CFITrainer.Net programs and have contacted me and said, "Hey, I'm new in this business. Can you take a look at some of my reports?" For example, and offer me some advice or suggestions, and I'm happy to do that. And so there are people probably in your area that would be more than happy to do that as well. And what may not be a formal relationship, but one that can be very beneficial to both parties.

Rod Ammon: Yeah, it seems like over the years you guys have taught me the power of relationships, and I think some notes that I had here were some of the state police and fire marshal's offices might be a good place to reach out to as well.

Steve Avato: Absolutely. The State Fire Marshal's Offices, and again, I assume just about every state in the country has some component that's responsible for investigation statewide, and typically those are very experienced investigators and very good at their jobs. They keep current in their educations, they keep up with the latest changes in the fire investigation field. And for new fire investigators, that's really what you need is somebody to help you to navigate through the changing world of fire investigation is we know NFPA 921 is going to change in some ways essentially every three years, and we need to find people who are able to help us navigate through what 921 means in the field. And so State Fire Marshal's Offices are typically very good at keeping up on the latest changes in the fire investigation field, and certainly some of the larger departments regionally have very good fire investigators who were very active.

Rod Ammon: So how about a hint or two for somebody who's a new fire investigator who's a little hesitant to reach out, got an idea there?

Steve Avato: Well, I think the first part of it obviously is you have to, as I've said, be active in your own education. You have to establish a base level of fire investigation knowledge first, and that can be obtained through the formal classes that your department may offer or require or that the state may offer or require to become a certified fire investigator. But certainly regionally, the IAAI holds conferences, most state chapters hold their conferences. ATF offers training and certainly the CFITrainer programs provide a good base of knowledge. And from that, then the newer fire investigator has to look to other resources in the area. And honestly, you have to put your ego in check if you would, and admit to people, hey, I'm new at this and I want to learn. What I found over the course of my 30 years or so doing this is most fire investigators are happy to talk to other fire investigators about fire investigation. You just have to be willing to do that. And I think most of the, at least in my experience, a lot of the learning and the real education at conferences goes on during breaks and between meetings when people are standing in the hallway and they just relay their personal experiences to other investigators. But a newer investigator has to be careful because sometimes there's bad information that's put out there, and that's why the apprenticeship programs, if you would, have gotten a bad name. If we have bad information that's being passed around the field, that causes problems and leads to what we used to call the myths and legends of fire investigation. So even the newer investigator has to figure out ways to ask questions and when they feel like there's a disagreement, let's say, between information they received at one conference and information they're receiving at another is to find a way to respectfully resolve that and ask questions to try to get answers that make sense to them, and they have to do a little bit of research on that too.

Rod Ammon: All right. So what I'm hearing you say is, hey, you got to do some work on your own to get ready for this, and you've got to do your due diligence with, excuse me, all of your education before you start reaching out for some of these things. So I'm about to... I hope people will pick up the phone, but I know a lot of people will write an email. Can you give us specific hints for how you would do that outreach?

Steve Avato: Yeah, I think initially the best way to do these things is just to attend some class regionally somewhere that's being offered in fire investigation and then talk to the people in the class, get a list from the facilitators of the class of who is in the class, what departments they represent and their contact information. And as I said, it has to be something where you are active in your own education. There are, I suspect a lot of people, for whatever reasons, their personalities are just not outgoing enough, but they go their whole careers in an isolated position. They don't really reach out to other investigators for their advice and counsel. And ultimately they may go through their whole career without any problems in that regard, but one day they may come across a major investigation, something that involves fatalities, let's say, or large lost fires, and they're not prepared for it, and they're not prepared for it because they didn't take an active part in their own progression and professional development. So if you're not willing to do that, you're going to be behind the eight-ball to begin with. So there has to be a little bit of incentive on your own as a learner to reach out. I know, again, to keep bringing up the CFITrainer programs, at the end of every program, there is a list of people that were involved in that presentation and there are ways to reach out and contact those people if you have questions about the programs or the presentations. And that's one way to start, but your local area has investigators. I'm sure that everybody knows or have been the people that have been doing this for a long time and seek their advice and counsel. As I've said, I've very rarely found anyone that's not willing to share their information or knowledge in the fire investigation field.

Rod Ammon: Okay, thank you. I was thinking about the people who may not have the money to go to a conference and they're doing their work, but they want to reach out to somebody either local or on the state level. And I was thinking about what can they do?

Steve Avato: Yeah, I would say that the best thing to do is to reach out to the local departments near you. It doesn't have to cost any money. Try to put together maybe a resource list of who the investigators are in the neighboring communities, get their contact information, and it doesn't have to be a formal program. It can just be, "Hey, we had a fire last night. I want to bounce a couple of ideas off of you." Or "Hey, would your department be willing to have you come over to my scene and help me out and take a look at this?" I think most places have mutual aid agreements, at least in the public sector, and so those things don't have to cost money, but they may pay large dividends. From there, you can get resources and those people may know other people and they may say, "Hey, I know a guy at the State Fire Marshal's Office who could help us out with this." And together you contact that person and you build and develop your relationships in that mentoring atmosphere.

Rod Ammon: Sounds like all good advice. And having been around fire investigators for years, I've never seen them not want to help somebody out or not get into telling you stories and sharing everything they can. So when you've mentored people, why don't you tell me about how it worked?

Steve Avato: I've probably been involved in mentoring programs for even longer than I was involved in Fire Investigation Field. A long time ago I worked as a volunteer paramedic in Southeastern Pennsylvania, an area I know you are very familiar with, and there as either an emergency medical technician or an EMT paramedic. You were usually assigned to work with a preceptor, somebody that would help train you in those fields. So even before I got in fire investigation, I began to realize the importance of a mentorship relationship. So it's not unique to Fire investigation, but as I moved into ATF and working in my federal law enforcement career, a ATF Certified Fire Investigator Program began to utilize a formal mentorship process where you were essentially assigned to a senior investigator, a senior certified fire investigator who would provide all aspects really of mentorship for you, reviewing your reports, discussing fire science and fire dynamics issues with you, making sure that you understood the core concepts in fire dynamics and fire science. But it went beyond that in a lot of ways. And I think that's important to keep in mind that the mentorship program is not just about the specific formal and technical details of an investigation, but includes things like ethics. How do we ethically do our job? What is right and wrong? What kind of an information should we reveal or keep close to the vest? These kinds of things. How do we conduct interviews? What information do we reveal when we're conducting interviews? Those kinds of things that may not be the technical scientific mentorship knowledge, but goes along with that process. So as a newer certified fire investigator with ATF, I was mentored and learned how to both be a mentee and to be a mentor. So as I moved on in my career and got more involved in training and had certified fire investigator candidates assigned to me as a mentor, I was learning from them how to be a mentor and the things that mentees needed in their development. And so I think I've continued that on as I transitioned into County Fire Investigation Unit, I think, and at least I hope I provided some mentorship for them. And I continue to have contact to this day with people from both ATF and the Loudoun County Fire Marshal's Office where I retired from. And I'm constantly answering questions or providing what advice I can. And along with that, again, is I'm constantly speaking to fire investigators and people I worked with over the years and asking them their opinions on the new changes in 921 or some new article that I read in one of the journals. And so that process continues forever. I guess it's essentially part of being a lifelong learner, if you would.

Rod Ammon: It's interesting because what I hear you saying, and I think it's a good hint, is that have something specific to discuss to kick off this conversation.

Steve Avato: Yeah, I think that's probably the best way to start is to have some specific area that you would like to get better at. For example, if you just want somebody to review your report for, say, and I've seen this in a lot of newer fire investigators, is they have the knowledge to make the decisions about the origin and cause of a fire, but they struggle sometimes in putting that on paper. And so I've had people that will ask me, "Well, how would you word this in your report? Or how would you say this? Or is this the information that should be included in a report?" That is a good place to start is to call a neighboring department or a friend or a fellow fire or even the people in your office if you have the luxury of having more than one person is to not be afraid to make yourself vulnerable if you would and say, hey, take a look at this report. I'm still new at this. I need help. What is the best way to present this information? And then you can go from there. And that can be done for any aspect of fire investigation. If you had an electrical or what you believe to have been an electrical fire that day, maybe reach out to someone you know has more knowledge in the electrical field than you do. Even if it's not a fire investigator, call an electrician and say, "Hey, would you be willing to help me out? I have a couple questions regarding this fire that I was at, and I have some questions with regard to how electricity works and how the feed would've been into this house or what would've happened if there was an overload on the circuit." So it just takes a willingness to get better at your craft.

Rod Ammon: Yeah, I've heard this from so many good leaders, smart people ask questions. And a a lot of times, you and I grew up probably more during a period of time where it was like, look, you just got to know your stuff, be strong, be confident, and all these things. And I like the fact that you're saying, hey, reach out. So let's talk about the mentee side. How do you pick a good mentor? What do you look for? How should you approach that person, and what can you ask for, what's okay?

Steve Avato: I think some of it will be trial and error, to be honest with you. Some of it will just have to do with who's available in the area to talk to. But I found that as your education increases, your ability to assess other people's ability if you would, gets better. So as a new fire investigator, you may talk to somebody in the neighboring department and they are telling you things that you've never heard before. So it's incumbent upon you then to go research some of that. And as I said, take a little bit more responsibility on your education, do some research. If I were to tell you that, for example, beating only occurs on energized conductors in a fire, so the beating on the wire only tells you that this conductor was energized. You can take my word for it, which is it's just one way that the mentorship relationship works, but I feel like it's also incumbent upon you to go back afterwards and go back in the 921 and check what I said. So check the mentor's work as well. Not only does it reinforce what the mentor may have told you at the scene, but it increases your ability to conduct research, your own responsibility towards juror education. And there may be times where you find conflicting information. And so you have to also find a way to disagree respectfully and to say, "Hey, Rod, you had told me the other day this, but I found this article that says this. What am I missing here? How am I misinterpreting what you said? Was there some subtle nuance that I'm missing?" And that works both ways that can then help the mentor to say, you know what? Maybe I was wrong on that, let me see the article, read that, and let's talk about this together and work through this process. And by doing that, you both become more knowledgeable.

Rod Ammon: Sounds like good advice for any relationship.

Steve Avato: Sure. I guess to work through all your problems together. But it again does not have to be a formal established relationship, it's just somebody you're bouncing ideas off of. Even if you don't want to call it a mentor-mentee relationship as you progress in your fire investigation career, I think later on you'll say, you know what? I really considered Rod as a mentor in the early days of my career. Even if you didn't call him or her by that name, somebody that you learn from as a mentor, that's essentially all there is to it. The mentor has to be willing to share their knowledge, and the mentee has to be open to what that knowledge is.

Rod Ammon: So now we're talking, let's talk a little bit about the mentor side. I can imagine some people are a little hesitant and they're wondering, how do you know when you're ready to be a mentor and what you should be prepared for and what'll be asked? And what if you don't know the answer?

Steve Avato: The answer to that is simple. Believe it or not, this may come as a surprise to some people, but I don't think I know everything. I don't think I will ever know everything, even as a mentor. So as a mentor, you have to be willing to also acknowledge your limitations. And if someone comes to you and says, hey, I have a question about, I'll use electricity or electrical systems because I was never an electrician, I have some questions about electricity that I don't quite understand. I have to be honest as a mentor and say, you know what? I'm a little weak in that area, so let's look at this together. Let's find some resources. I have a couple of books here. We have 921 resources, let's go through them together. What are your specific questions? And again, as a mentor, you have to be willing to admit your limitations but not withhold what you know or even that you may be a little weak in that, but be willing to work with the mentee through the problems. And honestly, it's just for the mentor, the biggest responsibility that a mentor has is being willing to share their time and knowledge and experience. That's essentially why I would go to you to be a mentor is because I believe you have more knowledge training and experience in this field than I do, and I would like you to share it with me. And so the biggest, I think responsibility and the biggest way to have a mentor mindset, if you would, is to always be willing to answer somebody's questions or to share your time to the extent that you can, obviously with safety issues and concerns, but to be willing to share that information and knowledge when you can. I always tout the idea of always and constantly being looking out for teachable moments. If I see an odd thing or an unusual occurrence or event at a scene, I would routinely call people over and say, hey, let's take a look at this. This is an odd thing here, let's take a look at what we have here and what do you think is going on and try to make it into a learning experience and a teachable moment. And I think everybody can do that. I've had a few instances in my career, and I will say a personal story here. Many years ago I was working the fire in a restaurant and I recall one of the firefighters at the scene came up to me and was asking me some questions about how you go about fire investigation. And I picture myself as being a cranky old man, and I expected, I probably told him to leave me alone and don't bother me kid, I'm busy. But I will say years later, I had somebody come up to me in a completely unrelated scene at a training event and say to me, hey, I don't know if you remember me, but I was a volunteer firefighter in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, and you were working a fire at a restaurant. And I came up to you and I asked you, "How do you go about determining the origin and cause of fire?" And apparently I didn't tell him to leave me alone and get lost, I spent a little bit of time explaining to him the process and what I was looking at and what we were seeing at that particular scene. And it turns out years later that that individual went to work for NIST, I believe the National Institutes of Standard and Technology in Fire Investigation programs. And so you just never know when that mentorship relationship might come back and the influence that you can have as a mentor, even if you don't think of yourself at that time as being a mentor. So I don't know if that story helps in this program, but I think it goes to the idea of always being willing to share experience and knowledge with whoever happens to ask for that information.

Rod Ammon: I think the story's very relevant, and I don't think of you ever as a cranky old man. I don't think that'll happen. I don't think it's in you.

Steve Avato: Well, you should have seen me at six o'clock this morning. How's that?

Rod Ammon: Well, yeah.

Steve Avato: Go ahead.

Rod Ammon: Are there formal ways that you could become a mentor? Are there programs that you can reach out? It seems like not, it seems more like it's an acceptance or an awareness that others may need help and just being open to assist them.

Steve Avato: Well, I'll be honest with you, I am not aware of any formal program that teaches you how to be a mentor. I'm sure there are leadership companies out there that have programs that do that. I personally am not aware of them, and I don't believe I've ever taken a program that was specifically geared towards preparing someone to be a mentor. I have taken instructor training programs. As I said many years ago as a paramedic, there were preceptor training programs to teach you how to teach new paramedics how to do their job. And so that's probably the closest that I've come to something like that. But I'm not aware of anything within the fire investigation community that teaches you how to prepare yourself to be a good mentor and for that matter or how to be a good mentee, if you would, and being receptive to learning. I know we've had some discussions locally on talking about organizational structure and fostering and encouraging mentorship programs through formalizing field training officer programs. So that may be the closest thing that we come to that is talking about field training officer programs for those departments that have enough personnel.

Rod Ammon: Yeah. It's interesting, even though there may not be formal training, it's interesting when you look at training and education in so many ways in the fire service, oh my God, training's so important. I think even though it isn't formalized, what I'm hearing you say is this is a really important thing and it's the kind of thing that people look back at after their career has moved on, and they definitely have these people who became mentors to them, and it's just so valuable. I just want to motivate people, and I know you do too, to reach out, build relationships with others. And I'm wondering what you think, how you think a healthy mentor-mentee relationship looks like?

Steve Avato: Well, I think the hallmark of that healthy relationship between a mentor and a mentee is just always being willing to respectfully share information and knowledge back and forth to agree to disagree sometimes when that comes up. But for the mentor to always encourage the mentee to think about what knowledge they're gaining and if it makes sense and will it work for them. One thing I've found again over the years in working collaboratively with various fire investigation units throughout the country and frankly in other countries around the world, is there has to be that willingness to share that information. But when you're questioned about it, to be willing to discuss calmly through whatever disagreements there may be, I need to make sure that the person that I'm mentoring, if you would, is getting the information and understands it. So there were times when I would say to people that I was working with in that mentorship relationship, all right, explain to me what you see going on here. Explain to me in your words, because I think as a mentor, one of the things I feel like mentors sometimes make a mistake in thinking that the student, the mentee if you would, has to do things and understand things exactly as they do. So I need you to process this fire scene exactly the way I do it. And I don't think that's a good way to be or to teach or to mentor someone. People have to find their own way and be comfortable in it. What I want to teach them is the framework of the job. This is how we need to do it to do it well, you may use a shovel instead of, I don't know, a garden trial, that's fine if it works. So you don't have to do things exactly the way I do, but you have to understand why you're doing them and how they fit into the overall framework of fire investigation.

Rod Ammon: Okay. So let's take this more towards education and training goals. And I'm thinking about, we hear about continuing education and naturally there's formal classroom settings and conferences, but learning how to do your job better from more experienced professionals has been around for a long time. How can investigators add mentorship to their professional development?

Steve Avato: I think it's an essential part of it, honestly, whether they formally recognize that, as we've talked about already or not, there's always I think or should always be people in the fire investigation business that you reach out to bounce ideas off of, and that is part of your professional development. There's times when you can just be talking to a peer or coworker and get ideas from them to get a different perspective or view on a fire investigation that you yourself didn't have. There's a lot of talk in fire investigation about bias and biases and confirmation bias, expectation bias. And one of the ways I think you overcome that is by interacting with other fire investigators, getting different opinions and getting different ideas. And that has to be part essentially of professional development. You can't stay isolated in this field and do your job well. You have to reach out to other people at sometimes either through formal education programs or just informally getting together with two or three of your local fire investigators over lunch to talk about a particular fire or an investigation or a particular aspect of fire investigation. A great opportunity will be coming up here probably by April of 2024 when a new edition of 921 is going to come out. When that new edition comes out, it's a perfect time to call up some of the investigators in your area and say, hey, let's take a look at this new edition of 921. It's easy to see if you understand 921 what the new sections and what the changes will be because they're clearly marked. So let's talk about some of these new changes in 921. We have the opportunity to do that essentially every three years with a new edition of 921. And I think that's one way to reach out and build relationships with other investigators and to enhance your professional development. We all have to work from the same guide for fire and explosion investigations, so it gives us a common language that we can reach out to other people to talk about.

Rod Ammon: So this might be a little repetitive. And then I want to ask you is what kind of things, did I forget anything, but I want to give people a couple bullet points of what to do if they want to be mentored, but they aren't sure how to set it in motion. I know we've discussed it, but could you give me a review on that?

Steve Avato: I think the best way probably to start in a mentorship process is whether you're a mentor or a mentee, is to reach out to other investigators in the field, either in your own department or organization. And I shouldn't try to be so focused to my experience has always been in the public sector, but certainly in the private sector there are investigative organizations and there are typically senior personnel in those organizations. And if the department or organization doesn't have a formal process, then you have to create one on your own to be that active learner, to find people in the area with more experience and reach out to them to discuss something like a report to say, hey, this is the first report I'm ever going to write, I would like somebody to review it and give me your feedback on it. And that can be the beginning of that mentor-mentee relationship. And really the journey has to begin with that first step. And that first step is often just reaching out to someone and saying, hey, I'm new at this, can you help me out a little bit? And whether that is physically helping you add a fire scene or just talking about some aspect in 921 that you're not comfortable with or you don't understand, that first step really has to come from you as the learner. If there is no formal program, if you're assigned to work with say a senior investigator, then that takes some of the burden off trying to figure out how to establish that relationship. But if you don't have that, then it does have to be some individual responsibility to reach out.

Rod Ammon: Well, sorry, I had you repeat it, but I think it's so important, and I think you've given people license to pick up the phone.

Steve Avato: And honestly, Rod, I don't know that there's any other way to do it. Having worked in a large federal organization, of course we had lots of resources and there were lots of people around to reach out to. And certainly just another plug for both our forensic science laboratories and the fire research laboratory at ATF, we had lots of resources and lots of people that we could reach out to. But in working with departments in Virginia, some fire investigation units have one person assigned to it, and they're brand new because they only got assigned to that unit because the last guy retired. And so there is no internal department way to establish a mentor/mentorship relationship, but typically there has to be some initial training for that person. Generally, there's either the State Fire Marshal's Office or the state has some program where they require a minimum amount of training, and it's incumbent upon the individual fire investigators to establish some relationships in that class. And you may be both new fire investigators, but there can be a mentor-mentee relationship that goes on even among new fire investigators. Just to have somebody to bounce ideas off of keeps you from living in your own sort of biased world. And the world has more to offer than just what you give it, if that makes sense. When you start talking to other investigators. And as I've said, through my years here, most fire investigators are perfectly willing to talk about all of their experiences and the things they've done. And especially in the public sector, firefighters and police officers who get into fire investigation perfectly willing to share their experiences and knowledge.

Rod Ammon: I think you're laughing because sometimes it's easier to get them to start than it is to get them to stop.

Steve Avato: I may be guilty of that myself, and I tell people all the time, I love talking about fire investigation and it is one of the things that I enjoy most in life. I know you've seen me at conferences and in other people have too, I get more out of those conferences in the hallways and after the formal training just by talking to other people than I do sometimes in the classroom itself. And that's not to demean the instructors and the people that teach in those classes, it's just that interaction with other fire investigators is what I love most about this industry. And I think I have put my money where my mouth is, so to speak, in that I have made offers in classes and presentations that I've done that if you have questions, reach out to me. Here's my email address. And I know over the course of years, I have reviewed reports for other people. I received an email just the other day from a fire marshal in a department who's fairly new, which who had some questions about 921 and the classification system, and of course 921 having dropped that classification chapter and the ramifications for a public sector department. And he reached out to me and we had some discussions on that. And so I feel like once you've made the commitment to be a mentor, in my opinion, it becomes a lifelong process. I'm still perfectly willing, and I hope at some point when I'm 77, 79, maybe in my eighties, I'm still talking to people about fire investigation and helping them along the way. So I hope other people find that sort of joy in sharing that knowledge.

Rod Ammon: I believe you do. And I also think this is a great opportunity to say to people that it also has a lot to do, or it's a great pitch for the IAAI membership on both the state and international level. And to get really down to basics, you join the international and you can actually go into the database and search people in your specialty in your area. So there's a great opportunity there to build this network as we've talked about. What am I missing? Anything today?

Steve Avato: I think what I would say about the mentorship process or programs, if you would, is that there's essentially, or should be three components to it. There is the mentor, the person providing the knowledge and the experience. There's the mentee, the person receiving that knowledge, who should be an active learner, asking questions, seeking educational opportunities. And then I believe there should also be an organizational component to the program, either in the public sector departments, through having a formalized field training officer program, or in the private sector even with small organizations and essentially one man shops, if you would, having a way to reach out to other organizations to get that learning and that mentorship. And everybody should be participating as both a mentor and a mentee at some point in their professional development in their career.

Rod Ammon: Thanks again for your time with us today, Steve. Well, we all like this topic because it highlights the importance of building human connection. And as you know, we think tech is great and it's given us a lot, but we lose the one-on-one learning when we're only behind our screen. So thanks for all you're doing to connect people and mentor relationships, and we'll continue to learn from each other in our real lives. Thanks a lot.

Steve Avato: I hope so. And thank you, it's been a great pleasure, as it always is, dealing with you and being part of the CFITrainer programs and podcasts, and frankly, the membership in the IAAI, it's been great for me and I hope others realize the great benefits for it as well.

Rod Ammon: Awesome. Thanks for the kind words. Be well, Steve.

Steve Avato: All right, I appreciate it.

Rod Ammon: This podcast and CFITrainer.Net are made possible by funding from a Fire Prevention and Safety Grant from the Assistance to Firefighters Grant Program administered by FEMA and the US Department of Homeland Security. Support from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, and voluntary online donations from CFITrainer.Net users and podcast listeners. Thanks for joining us today on the podcast, stay safe and we'll see you next month. For the IAAI and CFITrainer.Net. I'm Rod Ammon.