About Us

Kate Hill — 
New Zealand Fire Service

Born and raised in Eng­land, Kate moved to New Zealand in 1998. She spent her ear­ly years liv­ing across the road from a fire sta­tion and the thought nev­er came into her head that she, as a female, could become a firefighter

For­ward to 2001 and an advert was placed in the Women’s Day mag­a­zine faced by a female fire­fight­er call­ing for appli­cants to become fire­fight­ers. Kate applied and nev­er looked back.

Hav­ing served near­ly 18 years in Fire and Emer­gency New Zealand (FENZ) as a fire­fight­er and offi­cer, Kate is cur­rent­ly on sec­ond­ment at Fire and Emer­gency NZ Nation­al Head­quar­ters as a Nation­al Oper­a­tions Advi­sor becom­ing the first uni­formed female at Nation­al office.

This year Kate had been elect­ed as Pres­i­dent of Women and Fire­fight­ing Aus­trala­sia (WAFA), and will enjoy tak­ing on the chal­lenge. She states ​“WAFA is a great organ­i­sa­tion and I’m excit­ed to build on the great foun­da­tions to help take it to the next lev­el, so hope­ful­ly one-day gen­der diver­si­ty will no longer be an issue and WAFA wouldn’t have to exist.” 

Kate also serves on the FENZ Uni­form Advi­so­ry Group, help­ing to ensure our fire­fight­ers have the best uni­form and pro­tec­tive cloth­ing pos­si­ble. She is also a staunch advo­cate to ensure women have the cor­rect uni­form they need, not just small men’s clothing.

She is a Grad­u­ate mem­ber of the Insti­tu­tion of Fire Engi­neers, Nation­al Com­part­ment Fire Behav­iour Train­ing (CFBT) train­er and Region­al Real­is­tic Fire Train­ing Build­ing (RFTB) trainer.