Young cadets Queen Anunay and Kishia Clemencia stood out in their class at the D.C. Fire Academy as being among the few women in a male-dominated field. Of the department’s 1,550 members at the time, 35 were women.
Fast forward nearly three decades, and Anunay and Clemencia are the ones in charge.
The two women were appointed in recent months to battalion chief posts at the department — promotions that made them the third and fourth women to hold the positions in the 135-year-old department’s history. There were no women among the department’s 41 battalion chiefs late last year before their promotions.
In their new roles, Anunay, 45, and Clemencia, 44, help oversee nearly 100 firefighters at 11 firehouses in the District. They were selected among a pool of 44 candidates — the only two women who qualified during an interview process measuring their preparedness for the high-ranking position.
“They will create a path for all of our young, female firefighters that shows them, ‘Oh, I can do that. That’s within my reach.’ ” D.C. Fire Chief Gregory M. Dean said. “They’re pioneers.”