International Women’s Day Highlight: Pueblo’s first female captain now fire chief

By Rebecca GvozdenPublished: Mar. 7, 2025 at 11:59 AM MST

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (KKTV) - It’s time to celebrate women everywhere. International Women’s Day is on Mar. 8. It’s a time to recognize the achievements of women throughout time to the present day.

Our 11 News Team spoke with a Southern Colorado woman who’s made many achievements of her own.

Barb Huber is the Pueblo Fire Department’s first female captain and now fire chief. Not only does she love helping people, her team, and being a firefighter, but she also loves her job of being a mother.

Within her career, Barb Huber moved up rank after rank, enjoying the challenge and adrenaline along the way. Before becoming Fire Chief Huber, she joined the military as soon as she got out of high school. Huber enjoyed a 20-year career with the Connecticut International Guard, Air Force Reserves, and retired as a Master Sgt. That’s where she became inspired to be a firefighter.

“The fire department fell under the civil engineering squadron, and a couple of the firefighters there were like, ‘This is the best job in the world.’” Pueblo Fire Chief Barb Huber explained. “‘You need to look into becoming a firefighter. It’s a great opportunity.‘ They opened up the idea of having women in the fire service. So they’re like, ‘You get to spend all your time with your kids because of the work schedule.’ And at the time, my daughters were very young, so once I got to Colorado in ’94, I started taking EMT classes and volunteering so that I would up my chances of becoming a firefighter.”

From there, she took off. Taking it one step at a time, moving up, helping people within the Pueblo community, and wanting to do more each time.

“The teamwork within the department, the teamwork outside of the department, it’s just been an incredible experience, a very positive one, just being able to help people,” Fire Chief Huber said. “Plus, it’s an adrenaline-driven job, so it’s very satisfying when what you trained to do works out the way it’s supposed to... I think the greatest opportunity I have available to me is the number of people who have a different insight or a different perspective. Everybody brings something to the table, and as an individual, I have blind spots.”

Fire Chief Huber advises women who aspire to make a change in the world to listen to the advocates in their corner and the help they offer, along with being honest with weaknesses. That strength comes from overcoming those weaknesses.

“We have to have a pretty good level of introspection about what are my strengths and what are my weaknesses,” Fire Chief Huber explains. “Going into a physically demanding job as a female, you should know that you probably need to have a workout routine to prepare yourself for the job so that you’re capable. It’s a simple solution, but you definitely have to set goals to make sure if this is the test, this is what I trained to.”

Barb Huber told 11 News that to be a woman means strength, capacity, endurance, and understanding. She says women can do anything just like everyone else, that it’s what they set their mind and vision to.

“It isn’t a matter of rank or position or who you work for,” Huber exclaims. “It’s a matter of helping the people around you and cultivating them to do better, so our leaders are everywhere.”