Ms. Carmen Hackett, shown with Patricia Sanguinetti from Arlington Community High School, Meg Tuccillo, Maryann Ullrich, and Susan Senn of AAUW.

On Thursday, February 20, our guest speaker was Ms. Carmen Hackett. She is a 53 year – old firefighter/paramedic with DC Fire and EMS and was featured this past summer on the local ABC and NBC news for her career accomplishments. She is a single mother with a 14 year- old son. Her rise to fame began with an AA degree in Culinary Arts. At the age of 20, she moved to DC and worked for GSA. Wanting more excitement in her life, she earned her Emergency Medical Technician Certification and began work with DC Fire and EMS. After 10+ years, once again she challenged herself and earned an Intermediate Paramedic Certification. That effort required 3 separate 6-month long training courses, 11 attempts to pass the qualifying exams, and 5 years total effort. Then, not content yet, she earned her full Firefighter designation in the Spring of 2019.  Throughout her career, she has continued to challenge herself and has risen to the status of her current job.  Along with her job, she enjoys hand dancing, painting and movies. She has 3 other jobs in addition to her Firefighter/Paramedic duties. Her presentation was quite humorous  and really impressed upon the girls the notion of “Never give up!” She is the perfect example of “Make It Possible”.

The Lunch Bunch young women, after a pizza, salad, cookies, fruit, and Valentine’s candy lunch, listened intently to her story. They asked several questions after about what it took to keep her going forward. They enjoyed her presentation very much.