Tiffany Green makes history as Prince George's County's first Black female fire chief

Tiffany Green’s appointment in June 2019 put Prince George’s County Fire and Emergency Medical Services under its first Black female chief and its first female chief, a symbolic break that carried immediate operational weight. The department she led answered more than 135,000 calls for service each year, so the milestone was measured not just in history, but in how fast help reached a burning home, a crash scene or a medical emergency.

Green became the department’s 13th fire chief, following a lineage that began with Lawrence R. Woltz. The county’s own fire history page places her rise in the broader shift that came after Prince George’s County adopted charter government in 1970, when county leadership took on a different structure and fire-service command became more centralized. Her appointment was also a visible marker in a county known for its size, diversity and heavy reliance on public safety services.

By the time she was chosen, Green had already built more than two decades inside the department. She started her fire-service career in March 1999 after more than 20 years as a volunteer in the fire service, giving her a grounding in both the volunteer tradition and the demands of a large county system. Local reporting also noted that she grew up in Prince George’s County after arriving as a 1-year-old, making her ascent a deeply local story as well as a leadership transition.

The job she inherited came with clear pressure points. Prince George’s County has said its fire and EMS system faces coverage needs across its stations, and a staffing reallocation plan was developed to address those gaps while warning that it could strain an already short-staffed system. For Green, the practical test of leadership was never limited to ceremony. It reached into emergency response times, firefighter staffing levels, recruitment and the public’s confidence that the department could meet demand across the county.

Green announced her retirement in June 2025 after 27 years of service. The county then said she would move into a public safety role as Assistant Deputy Chief Administrative Officer for Public Safety, while another historic appointment followed in July 2025, when Thelmetria Michaelides became fire chief. Green’s rise still stands as a defining moment in Prince George’s County public safety, one that tied representation to the hard numbers that shape daily life when the alarm sounds.