40 years of service, caring
Vicki Christiansen possesses the depth of knowledge and experience required of all Forest Service Chiefs, who move up the ranks and are not political appointees.
Chief Christiansen worked 26 years with the State of Washington, where she started as a firefighter and eventually became the state forester. She spent a year as Arizona State forester before joining the Forest Service in 2010. With the Forest Service, she started as Deputy Director of Fire & Aviation Management followed by Associate Deputy Chief of State & Private Forestry and Deputy Chief of State & Private Forestry before being named Forest Service Chief.
As Chief, the agency’s work environment became her first challenge at a time when sexual harassment and bullying allegations made headlines. Under her direction, work stopped for one day for a Stand Up for Each Other listening and learning session to address the agency’s core values – service, interdependence, conservation, diversity and safety – and Code and Commitments, all of which are as part of This is Who We Are.
As part of this work, she built the Work Environment and Performance Office to ensure the Forest Service creates and maintains a work environment in which individuals have a sense of belonging and are treated with respect and dignity. She and others envision a work environment characterized by mutual trust, valuing differences and inclusion, listening to understand, and learning from each other while working in a safe, healthy, harassment-free, productive and resilient environment. She firmly believes the presence of these cultural characteristics is essential to our mission.
Chief Christiansen also served during a time with increased size and frequency of man-made and natural disasters, such as wildfires, hurricanes, and tornadoes. She also led the agency during an unprecedented 35-day government shutdown, a major change to the agency’s budget structure, and the civil unrest that shook the country and agency employees. She also focused the agency on how to continue service to Americans and care for employees during the worldwide pandemic.
Christiansen officially steps down July 26, when Pacific Southwest Regional Forester Randy Moore becomes the 20th Chief of the Forest Service.
Chief reflects on challenging rewards
The emails began to flood her inbox when Vicki Christiansen announced on June 8 that she planned to end her four-year tenure as Chief of the U.S. Forest Service and a 40-year career in natural resources.
There were the usual congratulations and sorry to see you go messages. But increasingly the emails provided a personal connection—a moment in time when the Chief seemed, well, normal. Those messages labeled her as accessible, visionary, and as a person who walks the talk. They reminded her of the “incredible adversity” she faced during her tenure. How she had let them into her personal life through some of the more than 60 “selfie videos” she posted because COVID prevented her from visiting employees in the field.
Another employee seemed to sum up all of the correspondence: “I appreciated the way you led us through some incredibly challenging times by being human and recognizing that we are not just employees, we are whole humans who work for a complex, multi-faceted, everything to everyone agency. It’s rare to see a leader who can exhibit both masculine and feminine qualities in their leadership; to me you did this well. You showed up as you; at least that’s what I saw as an on the ground employee.”
When asked, Chief Christiansen readily points to employees as the highlight of her tenure, and the reason for any credit she may receive.
“My roses are clearly the incredible, absolutely incredible, responsiveness of our employees and how they handled all of our major challenges, whether it was 35-day shut down, record-setting field work and fire seasons, or the pandemic,” Chief Christiansen said. “There wasn’t a playbook for anyone. Not just for me as a Chief, but for anyone in the agency. How our employees responded really embracing service and safety was incredible.
Chief Christiansen steps away from the role on July 26 but will be with the agency through August as a special advisor for a smooth transition. Before going, she sat down with us to talk to us about her time as Chief.
You spoke of a rose, or a highlight during your tenure. Are there more roses? And what were the thorns?
There are so many roses, it’s hard to pick which ones to name. An important one for me is getting it absolutely clear what we stood for as an agency, our core values and how we treat each other. I guess you could say there is a rosebud in the works ready to bloom, and I feel confident and happy about that.
I would also be remiss if I didn’t highlight how we are busting through boundaries in a big way, through shared stewardship. I don’t want to name it just shared stewardship, but the ethos of shared stewardship of crossing our own boundaries and breaking down our own silos in our agency. Looking at landscapes and communities in holistic ways across jurisdictions. Of building more than just partnerships but building a huge amount of leverage and synergy based on shared and mutual goals and priorities across tribal, state, local and non-government communities. That’s a huge rose for me.
A very important rose is the work we did with Job Corps, which sat on the precipice of demise. We had to convince people who were not familiar with the program that the Forest Service benefits as much as the students do. We had to convince them that Job Corps offers opportunities to young people to change their lives, complete their education, and gain economic self-sufficiency. Our track record proved our points. So, the Forest Service will continue to be a leader for its 24 centers, which are among nearly 120 centers sponsored by the U.S. Department of Labor.
The thorns are not having all the knowledge of how to manage through a pandemic and wanting to know how to keep people safe. The difficulty became not having that knowledge to get those protocols in place quickly. Those were sleepless nights. Another thorn was not having enough resources to deliver all our services and work, which includes resources for our employees, such as appropriate compensation.
What kept you up at night, or maybe still keeps you up at night?
On a high-level, managing our lands is our most critical mission. Our natural resources are the most important green infrastructure this nation has. We have to work through the constraints and the bureaucracies or the limitations of authorities to be able to do what we know is right. However, sometimes our hands are tied.
As I mentioned, I have angst about the huge gap in parity and compensation for many of our classifications, firefighters certainly being one of them. Our employees are doing more than their fair share of work, and it’s fair they are compensated for that work. Out in the field, I hear, “Chief we love our jobs, but we can’t afford to live on the wages we make, and we don’t want to leave the agency.” We don’t want them to leave the agency, either. That keeps me up at night.
I am glad that at the end of my tenure we have a small breakthrough, but it’s only the start. It’s not a fix. But the door is open.
I think a lot about the well-being of our employees. I worry about not just their financial security or physical safety, but their mental and emotional safety on and off the job. Are we leaving somebody behind that is hurting? Are we improving our system to ensure there is a safety net for all people to be able thrive?
What do you believe is essential for everyone to understand about this agency and our employees?
The Forest Service is an important piece in the story of conservation. We are not the sole leaders of conservation, but we have a significant role and we have a far-reaching role. The challenges and rewards of this agency’s mission are profound. We’re deeply anchored in the direct stewardship of this nation’s 193 million acres of forests and grasslands. We are able to complete our whole mission in sustaining the health, diversity, and productivity of the nation’s forests and grasslands through the broad authorities of our state and private forestry mission and the deep relationships with state foresters, tribal governments, and many, many, many other partners.
Then we have profound in-house, leading-edge science that we contribute, not just within the agency, but for all lands to help address the conservation challenges of our times. It’s relevant and it’s responsive. That science is part of the core of this agency. But let’s not forget the impact we have on the world stage. No so much being an expert but being a convener and a global partner. It’s something for which we should all be deeply proud.
When we leverage all those capacities and authorities and connective tissues of this great agency, we find that we have far reaching with collaborative connections and significant impact.
We also need to do our part to meet people where they are. Many people don’t know the depth and breadth of services our agency provides. They can be consumers of science without ever knowing they are consumers of our science. They can be connected to a particular parcel of land but don’t have to know that it is National Forest System land. They can look at a watershed and not know the Forest Service plays a significant role in the health of that watershed. You only need to look at the variety of landowners to know the health of the watershed is not only dependent on national forests but dependent on the resilience we create together across ownerships.
You often say that the Forest Service has many opportunities but lacks the capacity. What do you mean by that?
The context of our world, our globe is the speed of change. Take the very contemporary and very real challenges of climate change. The things that my grandchildren will study in grade school won’t be current by the time they get to college. That’s how rapid things change.
A thorn is, to be very blunt, the slow pace that the wheels of government and the wheels of policies evolve. It feels like we’re always two to 10 steps behind where we should be. The nimbleness, even if we see it, is not always there.
Folks are working really hard, but we haven’t been at the right scale at the right place at the right time with all the right people. Because we haven’t been able to scale up with the current resources we have.
What is your advice for the next chief and future chiefs?
Look out ahead. It’s that extra time and the ability to influence the wheels of government to get us where we need to be. That is not an easy task.
The chief threads the needle of how to keep the mission and the delivery of the services for all American people in mind when advising policy makers or political employees of administrations. It is an important role, and a valuable role because we are so unique.
I would tell the next chief that you’ve got to bring your people along. You’ve got to care for your workforce in a way that it’s the most precious cargo you can have along this journey. Employees are the heartbeat of this agency. The services and benefits that flow from this agency are so very important and our employees are absolutely the most critical part of our mission delivery. We need to continue to learn and grow and to anticipate what is needed.
I would also quote Maya Angelou. She said, “Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better.”
How do you want to be remembered as Chief?
I mean, it’s not about me. It’s more about the agency.
If somebody made the association that the period from 2018 to 2021 produced some significant breakthroughs, that’s because of the work we ALL did. There seemed to be some insurmountable, completely unacceptable challenges in the work environment. But it was made clear what this agency stands for, and that is our values and how we show up. We anchored to those core values. We learned – and didn’t always get it right – but we showed humility. We showed grace. And we are coming out a better agency.
