THE NALPEXPERIENCE
Emily Galloway Named 2024 Kevin Kehoe Student Leader of the Year
By Jill Odom
EMILY GALLOWAY, A SOPHOMORE AT PIEDMONT TECHNICAL COLLEGE majoring in horticulture technology, is this year’s Kevin Kehoe Leader of the Year Award recipient.
Previously, Galloway was a firefighter
for four years. She says her start in the landscape industry was a byproduct of her firefighting career ending. Galloway sustained a severe shoulder injury during a downed firefighter simulation. She has had several surgeries trying to repair the 50% labrum tear, detached ligament and bone cyst. Now, Galloway is the presidential am- bassador for her college and president of the school’s horticulture club. She received her award at this year’s NCLC
and shared some of her experience transitioning industries.
WHAT WAS IT LIKE TRANSITION- ING FROM BEING A FIREFIGHTER TO STUDYING HORTICULTURE? It was absolute hell because I did not want to leave firefighting. I still don’t want to leave firefighting because firefighting is my passion. It is my family’s career. I’m a fourth generation, and the third in my generation, to be a firefighter. So, to carry on that legacy is important.
I knew that going into this career as a firefighter that a career-ending injury was common. Learning to love something else was not easy. My first semester was the loneliest that I’ve been. It was quite intimidating because everybody’s talking about plants and I still cannot keep a plant alive. We all have strengths and weaknesses and that is a definite weakness of mine. I know the science; I just can’t remember the science when it’s in my own house. Watching some other students in my program as they are developing friendships and new connections over their love of plants, and I’m sitting in the corner going, ‘I don’t know what these plants are.’ At home, I
38 The Edge //July/August 2024
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