Authority Board Chair
FirstNet
Chief Richard Carrizzo is an internationally recognized leader in public safety with over 41 years of experience in fire and emergency services. Appointed to the rank of Fire Chief in 1995, Chief Carrizzo has been having positive impacts to public safety over his entire career. In early 2023 Chief Carrizzo was appointed by the U.S. Secretary of Commerce to serve as Chairman of the Board of Directors for the First Responder Network Authority. Additionally, he served as President for the International Association of Fire Chiefs (IAFC) during the 2020-21 term and remains active as a Past President with the IAFC.
Chief Carrizzo is active in local, state, and national public safety professional organizations; is Past-President of the Heart of America Metro Fire Chief’s Council; and executive Board member for two regional fire chief associations. He successfully managed the difficult transition for his fire department from being an all-volunteer organization, to combination, then to a fully career department operating out of four stations.
Regional collaboration is very important, and he serves on the Mid-America Regional Council’s (MARC) Public Safety Communications Board as one of two metro fire chief representatives coordinating and setting policy for the entire 9-1-1 system in the nine counties and 120 cities within the metropolitan, bi-state region of Kansas City. Since 2002, he has also served as a fire representative on the Regional Homeland Security Coordinating Committee (RHSCC) within MARC and currently sits on RHSCC’s Executive Policy Committee to set policy for the operations and future of the coordinating body.
Chief Carrizzo holds a Master of Business Administration degree, a bachelor’s degree in business administration, an associate degree in applied science in Fire Science and is a graduate of National Fire Academy (NFA) Executive Fire Officer Program. He is also a graduate of the Executive Leaders Program at the Naval Postgraduate School for Homeland Defense and Security. He also holds the designation of Member Institution of the Fire Engineers (MIFireE).