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What does it mean to be a leader in safety? At the National Safety Council, we know safety leaders aren’t just born – they’re created. Often, it’s from a personal experience: Someone they care about was either injured or killed in an unsafe situation. Other times, they’ve been tasked with understanding the day-to-day challenges people face in their workplace or community, and they’ve made it their mission to ensure a culture of safety.
Lorraine M. Martin
President and CEO
National Safety Council
Regardless of how one gets here, you don’t rise to the ranks of “leader” unless you truly believe in the importance of safety and embody what it means.
When it comes to true safety leaders, the 2022 NSC Rising Stars of Safety are second to none. Now in its 13th year, the program recognizes up-and-coming safety professionals under age 40 who have a proven track record of safety leadership in their organization and are dedicated to continuous improvement.
These 39 women and men hail from 31 states and eight countries, making this year’s class of Rising Stars NSC’s most diverse yet. Each has demonstrated enthusiasm, skills and leadership that will undoubtedly inspire other safety leaders and colleagues. They exhibit a commitment to doing their part in ensuring people live their best lives, free of preventable injury and death.
All have an inspiring and encouraging story to tell.
They’re innovators, like Tony Mudd. In 1996, Tony’s grandfather was crushed by 5,000 pounds of lumber while working. At the age of 7, Tony watched his grandfather fight for his life. After his grandfather’s injury, Tony decided he wanted to prevent others from having their life changed in a split second because of a work-related injury. He founded Sensori Safety in Kentucky and created a Vision and Neurocognitive Performance Training Program for mobile equipment operators, designed to help employers predict human error by assessing, analyzing and measuring their vision perception, accuracy, reaction time and other data points. The program has succeeded in giving employers real-time data to determine if workers are mentally and physically ready for work.
NSC’s Rising Stars are leaders, like Christina Donovan, vice president of safety at Farrell Roofing in New York state, who takes a hands-on approach to safety. Christina is the person who employees at all levels call when they’re looking for the answer to the question, “What should we do?” If Christina doesn’t have the answer, she’ll find it. She recently updated her company’s corporate safety site audit procedures. Their new inspection contains more than 100 questions answered in real time with photo evidence. Any deficiencies are noted on these inspections, flagged as “corrective action needed” and tracked to completion in real time.
These honorees are self-starters, like Usman Ali, a chemical engineer from Fatima Fertilizer Co. Ltd. (FFL) in Pakistan, whose contributions demonstrate a passion for improving his organization’s safety culture. Usman developed a system to log, record and publish all hours in which employees were injury-free. The publication and display of safe work hours encourages and motivates FFL employees to work safer and keep the clock ticking. In May 2021, FFL achieved more than 60.2 million injury-free work hours, earning the organization the title of the “Most Safe Work Hours in the Fertilizer Industry” in the Guinness World Records!
Read each profile to learn more about NSC’s Rising Stars of Safety, Class of 2022.
And thank you to each of our honorees. Your contributions to the NSC mission of keeping people safe – from the workplace to anyplace – are truly stellar.
— Lorraine M. Martin
Rising Stars profilesUse these links to visit Rising Stars profile pages, or browse all profiles as a slideshow using the navigation arrows at the top of each page. |
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View Rising Stars profiles as they appear in the print edition of Safety+Health.
Join the Young Professionals Division
Are you a safety professional younger than 45? Would you like to connect with other “rising stars?” Develop your skills and advance your career in safety leadership by joining the NSC Young Professionals Division. All NSC member company employees are welcome to join this group to receive access to networking events, professional development opportunities and invitations to NSC Division meetings. Be on the cutting edge of safety and share your fresh ideas with your peers.
Learn more about how to get involved at nsc.org/ypd.
Tanveer Ahmad
Age: 35
Production Team Lead
Engro Fertilizer Ltd.
Daharki, Pakistan
“Being the process safety management coordinator of the Plant-1 production department, he launched an initiative to gauge the PSM knowledge level of the production team. For this, a quiz from PSM Level 2 procedure and international case studies was prepared and launched online with allocated time to attend the quiz. Almost 250 individuals took the test, and the initial overall effectiveness was 71%. The results also highlighted knowledge-wise strong and weak PSM elements of the participants. Refresher sessions and exercises were conducted to enhance the department’s knowledge on weak PSM elements. After three months, a post-quiz was conducted, and this time overall effectiveness was noted to be 87%.”
Angela Albright
Age: 32
Senior Industrial Hygienist
Savannah River Nuclear Solutions
Beech Island, SC
“Angela understands the importance of passing the baton to the next generation of safety leaders. She lends her knowledge and skill set to the SRNS Engineering Leadership Development Program, which is a multiweek program for newly hired, entry-level engineers to develop and prepare future leaders. Angela worked with engineers to conduct noise surveys and teach them how industrial hygiene evaluates and controls noise hazards in the workplace. This allowed her to build a working relationship with the engineers in her area and position other groups and organizations into working toward the same cooperative goal: a safer workplace for all.”
Usman Ali
Age: 35
Process Safety Management Lead
Fatima Fertilizer Co. Ltd.
Sadiqabad, Pakistan
“Usman did an incident analysis of the past three years that includes all the injuries and fires. Based on analysis of all root causes and investigation reports, Usman analyzed that 80% of incidents are related to individual training and behavior issues. Usman developed and launched a behavior-based safety contact audit program for the whole site. As part of this program, every management employee does a 30-minute safety round of his area on a monthly basis. The management employee observes the acts of the workers, reinforces the safe behaviors and counsels/trains/closes the unsafe observations at the spot.”
Jennifer D. Alter-Reichert
Age: 39
HSE Compliance Manager
CIMA Services LP
Pasadena, TX
“Jennifer is consistently looking for new and innovative ways for continuous improvement in the safety culture of the company. Her dependability and reliability are second to none. When you need a task done, you can depend on her to see it through to the finish. Whether it’s during normal work hours or nights and weekends, you can rely on Jennifer to answer the call. Her creativity for initiating and implementing new programs are always done with consideration of the safety and well-being of the employee.”
Gan Eng Wee Alvin
Age: 37
Radiation Safety Officer, Southeast Asia and Korea
Varian Medical Systems
Singapore
“He created a spreadsheet to log the company’s radiation licenses and engineers’ radiation licenses in various countries within the Southeast Asia region. This enables easy identification of expiring licenses and quick renewal turnaround, and resulted in zero compliance issues. He led and created a systematic spreadsheet for radiation doses, monitoring for 126 engineers. This resulted in 100% visibility of radiation dose of engineers (previously it was almost 0%, as dose report results were sporadic among the various countries and were not consolidated under one roof) and zero reportable radiation dose cases.”
Morgan Ash
Age: 39
Communication Services Manager (former)
Houston Health Department, City of Houston, Texas*
Houston, TX
“Morgan shares public health safety messages to 26 city departments and records voice-overs for virtual safety training used by all. She produces the monthly Director’s LiveStream, two employee newsletters, two newsletters to external stakeholders, and 12 hazard bulletins/videos used across 41 HHD locations. Her campaigns increase participation such as leading indicators of 55-plus facility inspections and 100-plus work observations completed monthly and analyzed during committee meetings. Indicators show 95% to 98% safe findings and around 20 monthly near-miss reports.”
*Morgan currently works for the Plains All American Pipeline Co.
Aaron Ashley
Age: 37
Regional Safety Director
ARCO Construction Co. Inc.
King of Prussia, PA
“With buy-in from upper management, Aaron created several safety programs, such as Safety Lessons Learned and the Safety Scavenger Hunt Program. The underlying goal for all of these programs was to promote engagement from the project and field management teams to positively influence the safety culture on our construction projects and office operations. Safety Lessons Learned allows Aaron to share important safety information companywide; the Safety Scavenger Hunt Program ensures ‘pencil-whipped’ inspections no longer exist and allows him to identify and post the top 15 trending safety hazards to all project teams.”
Devon Buller
Age: 33
EHS&E Manager
CNH Industrial
Benson, MN
“In 2021, Devon identified an emerging risk through a trend of strains, sprains and other ergonomic complaints coming through his occupational health nurse. Devon organized and led an action team that quickly developed a Lift Safe program involving strategic partnerships with vendors, leadership commitments, risk assessments, process changes and employee training. The program led to over $300,000 of new lifting devices, a significant reduction of the overall plant risk profile and ergonomic injuries/complaints reduced by 80%.”
Chris Cameron
Age: 38
Director of Occupational Health
Makovicka Physical Therapy
Lincoln, NE
“An example of an initiative that Chris recommended was with a local construction company. He established a unit of measure regarding employee fitness levels that helped control incident rates and ensure the employees hired are able to perform the tasks required. A key component of a company’s success is to ensure they hire individuals who are competent and physically able to perform a task. This is important not only to the safety of the employee, but also, and more importantly, to the employees who work with or near that individual and the company in general. As the safety director indicated: ‘Chris Cameron has single-handedly reduced our injury rates by 50% in just one year.’”
Ryan Thomas Cannady
Age: 28
Industrial Hygiene Supervisor
UCOR
Oak Ridge, TN
“Ryan manages a team tasked with implementing controls to protect the workforce, public and environment while accomplishing several high-hazard environmental remediation and construction projects. With advanced problem-solving and critical-thinking skills, Ryan successfully engages all levels of the workforce to enhance safety and improve operational outcomes. His efforts have contributed to UCOR’s ability to achieve a 2021 total reportable case rate of 0.67 (81% lower than industry average) and a days away restricted or transferred rate of 0.06 (98% lower than industry average).”
Jolene Chong
Age: 38
Asia Pacific HSEMS and Compliance Leader
Cummins Sales and Service Sdn Bhd
Selangor, Malaysia
“When Jolene joined the role, six sites within the region were in the ‘dependent’ stage of the Bradley curve. A high level of supervision was required in educating the technicians around safety initiatives. She implemented multiple safety programs and took personal effort to educate technicians about safety on the job, consequences of actions, and encouraged them to be more interdependent and share their safety stories. She used the theme of ‘walking the talk’ during her engagement with people working on the floor. She always made herself available to people by making rounds on the shop floor and leading by example.”
Austin Cichon
Age: 34
Division Safety Manager
Clark Construction
Bethesda, MD
“On average, two objects fall from height every week on jobsites across the country, putting employees at risk of serious injury. Recognizing this, Austin established measures to prevent falling objects during construction activities on the perimeter of buildings and leading edges where they pose a hazard. He advocated for leadership buy-in and worked with teams to increase education and ensure compliance. In conjunction with the new policy, Austin published photographs to illustrate specific examples, which have been key to the successful rollout of the effort. This policy is now part of Clark’s Corporate Safety Manual, applied to all of Clark’s operations and jobsites, and shared with subcontractors onsite.”
Sarah Cuscadden
Age: 35
Safety Leadership and Engagement Manager
Amazon
Seattle, WA
“In 2021, Sarah recognized the criticality of building and maintaining a sustainable employee engagement program. She developed a global safety observation program to encourage employees to report safety concerns or suggestions, and escalate them to their manager for tracking and resolution. Sarah initiated a pilot networkwide, covering 48 sites within 11 countries, which generated tens of thousands of suggestions. She gained insights from the actions to resolve. Pilot data also indicated a positive impact on both the recordable injury rate and total incident rate. As a result, the application was granted approval for implementation throughout all Amazon sites globally beginning in the second quarter of 2022.”
Justin Deflumeri, MS, GSP
Age: 33
Director of EHS and Training
Brady Enterprises
Weymouth, MA
“For his graduate degree, Justin led a leadership project for child care centers in New Hampshire. He was the first person to build a safety management system in a child care setting in Merrimack, NH. Justin went into the centers and developed an ergonomic program based around lifting the children and toys. He started a near-miss program for the center, where employees could come forward and voice their safety concerns. He had the child care center start a safety committee. Injuries went from a 3.2 to a .086. The staff loved the level of engagement.”
Kinsey Donner
Age: 30
EHS Coordinator
Valmont Industries
Claremore, OK
“Kinsey spends the highest percentage of time out on the shop floor. In order to enable this high amount of hours on the floor, Kinsey has effectively influenced other leaders at her site to take true ownership of proactive safety activities. As a key part of ‘sharpening the saw,’ Kinsey pursued and successfully achieved the Certified Safety Professional designation during 2022. Knowledge and skills associated with the CSP have enabled Kinsey to approach peers and associates from a higher point of authority and knowledge. Kinsey has been a leader in several multisite improvement teams such as ergonomics, crane and lifting safety, and machine safeguarding.”
Christina Donovan
Age: 36
Vice President, Safety
Farrell Roofing
Dunkirk, NY
“Christina heads a weekly safety call for all branch locations’ executive management, branch management and project management to discuss hot topics and encourage collaboration. She believes that a great safety program is a transparent one. Everyone should have a chance to be heard and all questions deserve to be answered. As a result, Farrell Roofing’s safety team has been more involved than ever before in reviewing estimates for safety, attending pre-construction meetings with customers and project management, performing regular site audits, and reviewing subcontractor safety documentation to ensure quality subcontractors on all projects.”
Desmond Etheridge
Age: 33
Risk Control Service Director
Liberty Mutual Insurance
Louisville, KY
“Desmond has been instrumental in the integration of formal risk assessment and behavioral observation techniques to guide injury prevention efforts at his locations. His efforts have resulted in a behavior-based safety program that observed over 15,000 employees in 2020 and captured data on millions of behaviors performed. This upstream data has assisted his target operations in reducing risk and reinforcing safe working methods. In addition, Desmond conducted multiple validation assessments that identify training and knowledge gaps that are influencing behavioral risk. The processes he has implemented allows for predictive measures to be implemented to make improvements in the injury frequencies.”
Kimberly Fuentes-Lehtonen
Age: 27
Occupational Health and Safety Specialist
The Boeing Co.
Kennedy Space Center, FL
“One significant outcome implemented by Kim was the ‘honest communication’ initiative. This initiative addressed the overall safety of the workplace by requiring the reporting of hazards, near misses and incidents. Before the initiative, employees felt they didn’t have an outlet to voice concerns. Kim recognized their frustration and created a procedure to submit and review reports. She also made herself available to help with reporting. With this information, she was able to investigate all incidents, hazards and near misses thoroughly and examine and correct their root cause. It encouraged workers to report health and safety concerns knowing there would be mitigation.”
Tech. Sgt. Dylan Gaissert
Age: 29
Safety Manager, Second Air Force
U.S. Air Force
Biloxi, MS
“Dylan led the creation of a high-risk training program to create a streamlined process and oversight of risk management of basic military training and 93% of all Air Force technical training. This program incorporated a five-step risk management cycle throughout the training environment with those training requirements deemed as a higher risk. Through the process, Tech. Sgt. Gaissert identified 750 out of 2,300 courses that fall under this new oversight. Due to these efforts, all training is now constantly under observation for trying to identify any new hazards to then manage and mitigate them to keep the Air Force safety graduating 189,300 students annually.”
Abigail Gaston
Age: 33
EHS Lead
The Boeing Co.
Kennedy Space Center, FL
“Abby developed and led the execution of an integral, quadrant-based site safety plan that focused on physical hazard elimination, injury prevention, cultural change and personal leadership to ensure technical hazards and adaptive challenges were concurrently addressed. Strategic initiatives included a manual material handling sweep; crane safety team; incident- and injury-free/safety culture teachings; and a first-line leader safety toolbox. Key performance indicators were established for all initiatives and reviewed monthly. Within one year, the Frederickson site saw a 38% decrease in recordable injuries. This site safety plan template became a standard for safety and quality organizations across Boeing Fabrication.”
Paul Gray
Age: 33
Safety Coordinator
Nutrien
Alberta, Canada
“Paul challenges the status quo with a guiding principle of sending ‘everyone home safe, every day.’ He encourages strategic thinking and innovation to continuously improve existing work practices and processes to eliminate or mitigate workplace exposures. He sets goals and establishes priorities to ensure effective time management, but remains flexible to meet the ever-changing needs of the business. Always generous with his time, he willingly steps forward to assist with projects that benefit both his facility and the business as a whole. He adapts well with working groups and is always ready, willing and able to take action.”
George Howard
Age: 34
Director, EHS Management Systems
Amentum
Boyds, MD
“In November 2020, Amentum acquired DynCorp International, nearly doubling managed head count. George developed an integration plan to implement the Amentum management system across the combined enterprise. As the leader of this initiative, George worked with deployed safety professionals to identify opportunities for improvement and develop implementation plans. Early integration efforts focused on areas of highest risk, such as injury management and risk assessments. The successful integration of the Amentum EHS program resulted in a 30% reduction in total recordable incident rate and a 55% reduction in lost workday case rate just one year after acquisition.”
Nimra Hussain
Age: 26
Deputy Manager, Health, Safety and Environment
Sindh Engro Coal Mining Co.
Malir Halt Karachi, Pakistan
“Nimra’s self-driven approach always helps her to inculcate innovation in systems and unveil the new prospects. This was elucidated when she diverted management’s focus toward an important domain of food safety that usually gets neglected while prioritizing operational aspects. Her thorough analysis of OPD cases reported at the site’s medical facility prompted her to implement the best food safety practices and get the training conducted through a third party. A comprehensive exercise was done under her lead, followed by procedures development, on-ground execution and ended up with an external audit that validated the facility as HACCP certified with no major or minor nonconformance.”
Hessa Jaffar Hassan Ali Al Jawi
Age: 37
Section Manager, Registration and Permits Section
Dubai Municipality
Dubai, United Arab Emirates
“During her three years of leadership, Hessa has managed to encourage 35 employees to submit 270 innovative ideas and suggestions, with a 100% participation; 43 of the suggestions have been evaluated applicable and implemented. In addition, Hessa has participated in a number of seminars and conferences, where she delivered awareness and modern solutions on safety matters. She also manages health- and safety-related permits for targeted business customers. Her keenness of ensuring businesses adhere to the safety requirements goes as far as visiting the establishments out of office hours and walking through the process thoroughly with them.”
Rory Mele
Age: 37
Director of Environmental Health and Safety
BHI
Vernal, UT
“Rory has increased the level of transparency concerning safety and safety initiatives by finding and using resources that haven’t been considered before. BHI uses Google Workspace, and from that he has created an intranet site, developed means and methods for health and safety documents to be submitted, and has established a reporting process that provides for easy analysis and program corrections. He has also discovered on this platform how to run a health and safety LMS by using these resources that BHI already pays for. His use of these items has increased transparency and communication, and has brought health and safety gaps to the attention of key leadership.”
Katherine Mendoza
Age: 36
Director of EHS
National Safety Council
Itasca, IL
“There are two major initiatives that Katherine has led recently. The first is on COVID-19-related policies, procedures and communication. Katherine spearheaded the creation of a COVID-19 response team, scoured sources of information and developed world-class approaches to COVID-19 mitigation across NSC operations. She also made them freely available, resulting in hundreds of thousands of downloads on aggregate. As mentioned, there have been zero employee-to employee/employee-to-public transmission of COVID within NSC. The second initiative is a much-expanded near-miss and incident reporting effort, leading to nearly hundredfold increases in proactive reports in the council’s system of record.”
Laura Miles
Age: 34
Site Process Safety Engineer
Indorama Ventures
Decatur, AL
“Laura initiated a dust hazard assessment in compliance with NFPA on all parts of the process that contained combustible dust. She led a team that used qualitative and quantitative methodologies to document the risks. The team struggled with documentation of hazard mitigation within bulk storage silos. Laura brought in industry expertise to help guide the team through the assessment for the bulk storage silos. After the risk was documented, Laura wrote a white paper on silo dust explosion scenarios to share with others in her company. Laura’s approach to understanding dust hazards allowed 12 risks to be fully documented and gave others in the company technical background for addressing dust risks.”
Tony Mudd
Age: 33
Founder
Sensori Safety
Louisville, KY
“While working with a client in the automotive industry, Tony created an employee calisthenics program to help new employees on the production line condition and exercise their muscles. Prior to Tony’s program, the company experienced high turnover of new employees due to discomfort in their hands and wrists. He developed and implemented an Occupational Work Hardening Program for new associates to strengthen and rehabilitate their muscles during a four-week period. He built a team to conduct ergonomic assessments and implemented a job rotation. He also worked with the engineering team to revise the work instructions and job safety analysis. After six months, it was benchmarked to sister companies as part of their new-hire safety training.”
Pacifique Munezero
Age: 38
Systems Safety Engineer
Naval Sea Systems Command, Naval Surface Warfare Center, Dahlgren Division, Dam Neck Activity
Dahlgren, VA
“Ms. Munezero developed digital architecture products using model-based systems engineering systems modeling language. She then brought this unique expertise back to her safety organization, where she provided mentorship and virtual training to other system safety engineers. She is leading the development of an MBSE-agnostic algorithm solution to embed safety requirements and hazard mitigations into a digital engineering model. This project, when realized, will allow system safety engineers to better support system development, testing and deployment of critical warfighter technologies at unprecedented speeds, while improving safety.”
Zach Pucillo
Age: 40
Mid-Atlantic District Team Supervisor
KPA
New Palestine, IN
“In 2021, Zach introduced a safety initiative known as the Regulatory Review process. He led our training team through short, accessible content modules that included definitions, interpretations, case studies, statistics and general guidance on how and why certain safety regulations came to be. He trained 106 current EHS professionals on regulations related to fire suppression, fall protection, electronic manifesting, waste handling, etc. Safety managers today still use Zach’s review process to educate thousands of workers across the country. His 2021 virtual webinars have been viewed live and on-demand more than 13,500 times.”
Christopher Quinn-Vawter
Age: 32
Industrial Hygienist
Sandia National Laboratories
Peralta, NM
“Chris had the opportunity to demonstrate true leadership skills and abilities during a project to recover an anomalous test article. Chris’ leadership was crucial in the team’s identification of conditions, developing means of elimination and mitigation plans for a wide range of hazards. When it came time to remove the test article, Chris was on the ground floor in leading the recovery. He ensured controls were in place and provided diligent oversight to ensure roles and responsibilities of safety were being followed, pausing work when needed and stopping work to reevaluate when unanticipated hazards were discovered.”
Sgt. Omar Salih
Age: 30
Occupational Safety Manager
726th Air Mobility Squadron
Spangdahlem Air Base, Germany
“Sgt. Salih arrived to his assignment, and immediately began planning a fall protection rescue exercise. Within two months, he executed a flawless rescue exercise that gave experience to his entire unit of more than 140 military and civilian personnel, and validated the capabilities of more than 300 airmen. Omar’s innovative mindset not only brought change to his squadron, but to the entire Air Force. He identified a flaw in a major Air Force safety publication, and standardized confined space training for the entire aircraft maintenance career field, which enabled a seamless transition for over 100,000 airmen.”
Chief Warrant Officer Jeffery Sanderson
Age: 39
Safety Specialist
Oklahoma Army National Guard (U.S. Army)
Blanchard, OK
“Jeffrey expressed concern about the amount of traffic safety-related mishaps. He sought out $25,000 from the National Guard Bureau to fund Motorcycle Safety Foundation rider training for Oklahoma soldiers. He then located 14 MSF courses throughout our state and created a local process to ensure soldiers had the ability to attend the course closest to their homes. Jeffrey also volunteered to become an NSC Defensive Driving Course instructor, with the goal of teaching soldiers the importance of safe vehicle operations. As a result, our state’s traffic safety mishap rate has reduced by 15% this fiscal year, compared to the same time frame last year.”
Heather M. Stepan-Paar
Age: 35
Occupational Safety Specialist
Argonne National Laboratory
Lemont, IL
“One of Heather’s leadership strengths is her ability to bring together diverse teams to work through safety problems. Recent examples include a complex installation of a helium-3 refrigeration system for low-temperature physics from a foreign vendor. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, company personnel were not able to travel to the United States to perform the installation. It was, therefore, decided to perform the installation, which included precision material movement and lifting, with local resources and vendor telepresence. Heather was able to coordinate the necessary safety review, which included multiple organizations, and the installation was a great success.”
Tyler Traweek
Age: 33
HSE Corporate Manager
Conco Services LLC
Verona, PA
“For the first three months of Tyler’s employment, he observed and listened while only intervening when absolutely necessary. He recognized that the culture we had was not the most welcoming to outsiders. He documented his observations and focused on building relationships. Once Tyler officially took over the department, he put together a comprehensive safety department improvement plan and got to work. He started by giving the department a mission statement to ensure everyone on his team knew what they were working toward. He set department goals and created KPIs to track weekly. He reorganized, restructured and redirected everything. The department has never been more efficient, productive or influential as it is today.”
Praveen Vayalamkuzhi
Age: 39
Postdoctoral Researcher
University of California, Berkeley*
Berkeley, CA
“Praveen developed highway safety evaluation methodologies/strategies and safety improvement decision-making tools for the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans), which are real, practical solutions to existing road safety problems. He helped train Caltrans’ safety group with the developed safety decision-making tool, which helps safety investigators rank the locations to investigate and recommend countermeasures. This resulted in the reduction of road fatalities and severe crashes – saving lives.”
*Praveen is now founder and president of MobilityVision Inc.
Ruben O. White
Age: 38
Occupational Health and Safety Manager (former)
Southwest Gas Corp.*
Henderson, NV
“When we identified a need for de-escalation training during a period of increased violence and aggressive behaviors toward utility workers, Ruben met with different vendors and other available resources to find a solution. The focus of the training was to educate employees on how to effectively handle conflict and difficult customers. The group developed eight scenarios to be shown in the form of training videos that were rolled out using a learning management system to measure and track the effectiveness of the training. Ruben worked with field operations management in identifying the scenarios that provided the most value in addressing aggressive behaviors.”
*Ruben currently works for the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority.
Vi Wilkins
Age: 28
System Safety Engineer
Naval Undersea Warfare Center Division, Newport
Newport, RI
“As part of Ms. Wilkins’ efforts to ensure the safety of the fleet and to lead the team responsible for the safety of the submarine, the program recently received concurrence from the Weapon Systems Explosives Safety Review Board to support a demonstration of the capabilities. To gain concurrence, Ms. Wilkins completed several complex analyses, including functional, hazard, requirements, health and system level, which were provided in a technical data package and briefed to the WSESRB. Ms. Wilkins’ efforts allowed the program to meet critical target milestone dates. She led a systems safety working group, which consisted of a group of experts, including high-level program and fleet personnel, to gain acceptance of the safety program.”
Cassondra Winner
Age: 29
Environmental, Health and Safety Manager
Avgol Nonwovens
Mocksville, NC
“Hand injuries were Avgol’s No. 1 injury. Cassondra focused on the tasks being performed when the injuries occurred and narrowed down the issue to the type of safety knife used on the production floor. She researched numerous styles of knives and, through continuous communication and working closely with multiple positions in production, she implemented a trial using different styles of knives. She also listened to the teams on how the knives performed. The safety committee discussed the knives and next actions. While performing the trial, she realized that sometimes a second style of safety knife may be needed versus trying to use one for multiple tasks. As a result, lacerations from the safety knives have decreased 75%.”
