As if it were just another day at work, San Francisco Fire Chief Jeanine Nicholson spoke to city leaders and colleagues who had gathered to celebrate her retirement at the city’s fire department headquarters. Nicholson made the announcement last month, saying it was “due to unforeseen medical circumstances.”

Crediting her team, Nicholson ran through a list of the department’s accomplishments and future goals, occasionally pausing to shed a tear between applause.

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Ruth Dusseault is an investigative reporter and multimedia journalist focused on environment and energy. Her position is supported by the California local news fellowship, a statewide initiative spearheaded by UC Berkeley aimed at supporting local news platforms. While a student at UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism (c’23), Ruth developed stories about the social and environmental circumstances of contaminated watersheds around the Great Lakes, Mississippi River and Florida’s Lake Okeechobee. Her thesis explored rights of nature laws in small rural communities. She is a former assistant professor and artist in residence at Georgia Tech’s School of Architecture, and uses photography, film and digital storytelling to report on the engineered systems that undergird modern life.