Firefighters train constantly for what might happen on the next call. But when it comes to their own cognitive and emotional readiness, the standard approach is still to wait until something goes wrong — and then react.

That's the disconnect Okaya CEO Greg Menvielle digs into with James Geering on Episode 1221 of the Behind the Shield Podcast, the most downloaded firefighter wellness podcast in the world.

The conversation covers a lot of ground — Greg's childhood in France, two decades building technology companies, and the path from studying ancient languages at the University of Chicago to building an AI that reads voice, facial cues, and language to assess how ready someone actually is to perform. But the core question running through the episode is simple: What if we could see the warning signs before they become a crisis?

That's what Okaya's AI, Sanora, is designed to do. A two-minute multimodal check-in — no questionnaires, no clinical setting — that generates a readiness score across cognitive, physical, and emotional dimensions. It's already deployed with U.S. Air Force Reserve units under a SBIR Phase II contract, and it's coming to the fire service.

Greg and James also get into wearables, the global mental health crisis, what "forging performance" actually means when your people are running on sleep debt and cumulative trauma, and why the fire service is uniquely positioned to lead on proactive wellness — not follow.

Listen to the full episode below.