Andrew Bartnikowski is a firefighter and lead paramedic based in Westerville, Ohio. He is known for crisis readiness, hands-on instruction, and building support systems for first responder families through the Class 12/10/12 Foundation.
A career shaped by readiness
Preparedness can look like a credential on paper, a checklist in a station, or a set of shared procedures that keep a scene from slipping into confusion. In Andrew Bartnikowski’s career, it appears as something steadier and more cumulative: a pattern of learning systems, teaching them, and then tightening the everyday work around them. That posture shows up in the practical choices, too, from piloting new reporting software that reduced patient-care report time by 20 percent to adding FEMA Independent Study coursework that aligns local response with national frameworks.
Bartnikowski is a firefighter and lead paramedic based in Westerville, Ohio. He joined the Pleasant Township Fire Department in July 2025 after more than a decade with the City of Columbus Division of Fire. Before Columbus, he served in Worthington, Ohio, and Bluffton, South Carolina. Across those years, his work has centered on the places where emergencies become coordinated action: patient care, incident management, training, and the less visible policies that protect the people who do the job.
His background includes client-facing roles in finance and sales, plus earlier work in the trades as an HVAC installer and pipefitter. It makes for a career that moves between urgency and planning, between what happens on a call and what must be built in advance so a call can go well.
From the trades to a different kind of pressure
Bartnikowski began in the skilled trades at Northwest Services, installing and servicing HVAC systems and working with plumbing, boilers, commercial chillers, low-voltage electrical, and fixtures. The trade work was practical by necessity, rooted in diagnosing problems quickly, reading a site, and coordinating with other professionals so systems met building needs.
He later moved into financial services at M&T Bank, where he served as a financial mortgage planner and account manager from June 2002 to June 2010. The work relied on consultative education and long-term relationship management. He exceeded quota for six consecutive years, consistently reaching 115 percent or more of quota, while delivering product education that increased adoption by 20 percent and client satisfaction by 15 percent. The role also involved B2B presentations to custom home builders and commercial contractors, and coordinating implementation with technical teams for enterprise clients.
In those years, his work depended on trust built over time. It also required precision, the ability to explain complex choices plainly, and the steady follow-through that keeps a pipeline from collapsing.
The fire service and the move toward instruction
By 2008, Bartnikowski was in the fire service, serving as a firefighter and paramedic in Bluffton, South Carolina, from 2008 to 2010, and then in Worthington, Ohio, from 2010 to 2012. In 2012 he joined the City of Columbus Division of Fire, where he served until 2025 as a firefighter and lead paramedic.
His emergency work included daily interaction with clinicians, nurses, healthcare providers, and patients to coordinate care and resolve concerns, functioning as a patient advocate and a solutions-oriented professional. Over time, he led thousands of critical care incidents as a lead paramedic, developing a practical way of communicating under pressure that favors clarity and needs assessment.
Training became a parallel track. Bartnikowski served as a firefighter academy instructor, apprenticeship instructor, CPR instructor, and live fire instructor, and also taught EMS as an instructor for paramedic students. From 2018 to 2022, he served as a firefighter instructor at Delaware Career Center, designing and delivering training for recruits and in-service personnel. His training work included live fire exercises, emergency response instruction, and preparation for state certification exams.
Instruction in this setting is not about speeches. It is a transfer of judgment, an insistence on repetition, and a demand that the basics hold up when conditions are worst. In Bartnikowski’s career, it becomes another expression of the same impulse that draws people to emergency work in the first place: the need to make outcomes less dependent on luck.
Systems, time, and the craft of documentation
A fire department is built on routines that keep chaos manageable. Even so, there are always systems that lag behind the pace of the work.
Bartnikowski helped pilot and train teams on new patient care reporting software that reduced patient-care report time by 20 percent. The gain is easy to measure, but the effect is more than speed. Documentation is how the medical story stays intact, how continuity of care travels with a patient, and how a department can track patterns and improve. Cutting time without cutting quality is a form of operational care.
His work also included performing company-level maintenance and repairs of fire apparatus, pumps, saws, hydraulics, electrical and safety equipment, and plumbing. It is a reminder that response depends on readiness in the most literal way. Tools must work. Equipment must be safe. The job is physical, but also mechanical, procedural, and disciplined.
The union hall and the long view
Leadership in public safety is not only an on-scene posture. It also appears in the rooms where policy is decided, where safety is codified, and where the terms of the work are negotiated.
Bartnikowski served as a union steward and a negotiation committee member. In that capacity, he helped secure a labor contract described in coverage as a $300 million to $350 million agreement. His union work also included supporting members during internal investigations and contributing to policy improvements aimed at operational safety and member welfare. He participated in committee efforts tied to health and safety and to EMS initiatives, and implemented new operating procedures.
This kind of leadership demands patience and detail. It requires understanding how a policy will land on the floor, how it will affect a shift, and how it will shape risk over years. It also requires a temperament that can take conflict without turning it personal, and a willingness to protect people through structure rather than sentiment.
National frameworks and the choice to keep studying
In 2025, public mentions of Bartnikowski began to cluster around formal preparedness training. The credentials were specific: FEMA Independent Study coursework tied to the Incident Command System and the National Incident Management System.
He completed IS-100.b, Introduction to Incident Command System (ICS-100), a foundational course that supports standardized incident management. He completed IS-700.a, National Incident Management System (NIMS), An Introduction, and later completed IS-800.d, National Response Framework, An Introduction. The pattern is consistent: an interest in how response scales, how multiple agencies coordinate, and how shared language prevents avoidable failure.
These systems matter most on the worst days, when an incident grows beyond a single company response and coordination becomes its own kind of hazard. Training for that level of complexity suggests a professional posture that treats readiness as ongoing, not as a box to check.
The foundation and the afterlife of a call
Some of the most consequential work in a first responder’s life happens after the sirens fade, when families are left to carry what an incident changed. Bartnikowski’s nonprofit work belongs to that space.
He founded the Class 12/10/12 Foundation, a 501(c)(3) dedicated to supporting firefighter families facing injury, loss, or suicide. The foundation has raised more than $200,000, with other coverage placing the total raised at more than $150,000 over time through events and giving. It also developed partnerships aligned with mental wellness initiatives, including Save A Warrior, where Bartnikowski has been described as an affiliate sponsor.
The origin story most associated with the foundation centers on Firefighter Brandin O’Keefe, Bartnikowski’s academy classmate, who was diagnosed with melanoma while still in training and later died. What began as a modest effort to support O’Keefe’s family evolved into an annual event with a longer horizon.
Over more than a decade, the Brandin O’Keefe Memorial Golf Outing grew into a recurring community fixture. Coverage of the event notes that the September 25 outing at Cumberland Trail Golf Club generated $10,500 for the foundation and its partner, Save A Warrior Foundation. After years of leadership, Bartnikowski and the original organizing committee passed operational responsibility to Firefighters Joshua Cumston and Tom Covert, a transition that signaled continuity rather than closure.
The work reads as an extension of the same themes that show up in his training and policy efforts: build something that holds when people are under strain, and make it repeatable enough to last beyond any one individual.
A broad foundation, a consistent through line
Bartnikowski’s education includes studies at The Ohio State University, with listings noting Human Resources Management and Personnel Administration in 1999, and other mentions describing a Bachelor of Science in Resource Management. His certifications and training include Paramedic (State of Ohio), EMS Instructor, Fire Instructor and Live Fire Instructor, OSHA 30, Hazardous Materials Technician, Fire Inspector, Rescue Technician, Rope Rescue Operations certification, and an edX Verified Certificate for Facing Racism and Emotional Tax in the Workplace issued in January 2025.
Those credentials sit beside work that is harder to summarize in titles: minority recruitment liaison activities described as building targeted recruitment tools and strategies, peer support liaison responsibilities aimed at supporting fellow first responders, and a consistent interest in strengthening the human systems around high-stakes work.
It is a career that resists a single label. It moves from trades to finance, from documentation systems to union negotiation, from on-scene decisions to the longer recovery arc for families. Yet the through line stays clear. Bartnikowski tends to choose roles where reliability is the product: train the next person, improve the process, protect the workforce, build support that endures.
Why Andrew Bartnikowski matters now
In many professions, preparedness is framed as personal discipline. In emergency services, it becomes public infrastructure. The difference is that it must function under stress, with real consequences and little time to recover from missteps.
Bartnikowski’s career sits at that intersection. His FEMA coursework signals attention to national systems and interoperability. His training roles and simulations reflect an investment in repeatable performance. His union work points to safety and welfare as structural questions, not individual burdens. His nonprofit work expands the circle further, treating the aftermath of injury, loss, and mental strain as part of the same ecosystem that begins with a call.
The arc suggests a professional who treats readiness as a shared responsibility, built through systems and reinforced through practice. In a period when emergencies are rarely tidy, and when the demands on responders include both operational complexity and human wear, that approach carries a particular kind of relevance: not heroic in tone, but durable in design.
