With great pleasure I announce that Joe Buffone will become the next CFA Chief Officer.
He will be stepping into an extremely challenging role that requires specialist skills, deep engagement in the emergency management sector and a passionate commitment to our members, and we have no doubt that Joe Buffone is the ideal fit on all counts.
As CFA Deputy Chief Officer – Readiness and Response for more than two years until September 2014, Joe has already been embedded within this organisation. In a role that involved both grassroots contact and high-level strategy creation and implementation, Joe saw first-hand the professionalism of CFA members who both serve and lead their communities.
We will get the benefits of Joe having served under current Chief Officer Euan Ferguson. As with Euan, Joe will be a firm pair of hands in charge of Fire and Emergency Management.
He is a robust and dynamic leader returning to CFA with firm objectives and values, and providing a continuity in leadership.
Having served one year in the role of Deputy Emergency Management Commissioner with Emergency Management Victoria, Joe has also been embedded in the broader Victorian emergency management sector.
He has both breadth of vision but also the ability to focus on detail which will serve our brigades and the wider community well.
CFA will continue to tackle the challenges we face head on. The scrutiny will remain, as will the high standards to which all our members and the wider Victorian community holds us. We don’t shy away from that. We will continue to take a lessons-learned approach, and believe that when things are at their worst for our communities, CFA is at its best.
With a new leadership team of Chief Executive Officer Lucinda Nolan and now Chief Officer Joe Buffone, these are exciting times for CFA.
I know you will join me in welcoming Joe and wishing him well. Joe will begin work with us on 9 November.
Author: John Peberdy