My Big Safety Challenge

Scott Johnson, CSP, ASP still considers himself a “construction worker at heart.” But a chance encounter with a safety class in college set his career on a different course.

At a time when safety was still an emerging field, Scott saw its potential to make a real difference in workplaces and in peoples’ lives. Today, as vice president of safety and quality for the Americas at Schindler Elevator, he has seen the profession evolve from a focus on compliance to a greater understanding of the people behind the work. In this episode, Scott reflects on the lessons he’s learned along the way, from building genuine relationships with frontline workers to creating safety buy-in and making incremental changes that last.

When Monique Parker was considering whether to step into the role as president of ASSP, one thing gave her pause: she was already busy. But she also knew life wasn’t going to get less busy, and there was an impact she wanted to make. So, she decided to make it.

That drive to make a difference has shaped Monique’s career from the beginning. Monique went to school to become a chemical engineer, but engineering wasn’t quite right—she needed to know the people she worked with were safe, and thus a career in EHS began. Today, she is the president of ASSP and chief sustainability officer at Elevra Lithium. In this episode, Monique reflects on the people and experiences that have shaped her as a safety leader, and why making an impact requires a willingness to keep learning, reflect on who you are, and grow along the way.

Eliminating workplace fatalities by 2050 is an ambitious goal. For Kent McElHattan, it’s also a deeply personal one.

Safety has been a part of Kent’s life for decades, from helping grow Industrial Scientific into a global leader in gas detection to serving as chairman of the National Safety Council. Along the way, he came to understand that workplace fatalities often aren’t the result of people simply being careless. They happen while workers are trying to get the job done.

Now, through the McElhattan Foundation and its Zero2050 initiative, Kent is working to change that. In this episode he discusses what it may take to eliminate workplace fatalities, why near misses deserve greater attention, and how a $1 million prize is helping fuel the search for life-saving safety solutions.

Safety starts with people. For Amber Miller, Vice President at Large of the United States Steelworkers Union, protecting workers means creating environments where people feel heard and respected.

Coming from a family with deep union roots, Amber has long understood health and safety as a driving force behind workers’ wellbeing. In this episode, she shares her people-first approach to safety leadership and the importance of showing up with curiosity and empathy. She also explores why the people doing the work often hold the solutions, and how listening to their experiences can be the key to building trust and creating meaningful change.

What does it look like when an organization truly lives its values? For Human and Organization Performance (HOP) consultant, Steve Scott, it starts with trust: trust workers to know their jobs, trust workers to treat mistakes as opportunities to learn, and create enough trust for people to speak up about risks.

Drawing on thirty years of experience at Alcoa, from the factory floor to leadership and continuous improvement roles, Scott shares how HOP can help organizations move beyond simply preventing incidents, to understanding how to truly protect workers and organizations. He explores the benefits and challenges that come with putting HOP into practice, and why, as he puts it, “Telling people we’re going to make a change is not enough. You gotta demonstrate it.”

Season 7 of My Big Safety Challenge is here — and this time, host Merle Heckman is joined by a new co-host, Jim Frederick, Commissioner of the Virginia Department of Labor and Industry.

After six seasons and more than 50 guests from companies large and small, this season keeps digging into the real challenges safety leaders face — and how they work through them. In this trailer, Merle and Jim preview what's ahead: a steel industry veteran who built his career on enthusiasm and influence, a former hourly employee turned human performance trainer, an entrepreneur pursuing zero workplace deaths by 2050, a 30-year OSHA veteran, and a conversation about confronting drug addiction in the workplace.

Jim also shares his own path — from growing up in Indiana to running a state OSHA program in Virginia — and the two dig into why building real relationships, with regulators, coworkers, and everyone in between, is one of the most underrated tools in safety leadership.

John Whalen, CSP, AMERS Regional EHS Assessment Manager at Microsoft, shares his journey from volunteer firefighter to safety professional—and how those early experiences shaped his people-centered approach to safety. In this episode of My Big Safety Challenge, he explains why listening, empathy, and truly understanding workers’ needs are essential to solving problems effectively and building trust. John also shares his experiences working at a hospital, and later as a safety professional for a team of archaeologists, and how these experiences taught him to lead as a partner—not as an enforcer. Ultimately, John reminds us how invaluable curiosity and collaboration are for effective safety leadership.

With more than 30 years in health and safety, Jim Frederick of Nexus HSE has worked across industry and spent four years with OSHA, giving him a unique perspective on the shared responsibility of protecting workers. In this episode of My Big Safety Challenge, he discusses some of the most difficult situations safety professionals face, including workplace fatalities and serious injuries, and explains why these topics must be intentionally built into safety programs. Jim also challenges common misconceptions about OSHA, reminds safety pros that they don’t always have to have all the answers, and highlights the dedication of public servants working to keep workplaces safer.

Ty Farmer, senior director of Corporate Safety at Dycom Industries, Inc. could have let being placed on a performance improvement plan (PIP) early in his career derail him completely. Instead, he turned a difficult moment into a powerful learning experience and an opportunity for growth.

Ty’s military background led him to his first role at General Electric (GE), where he was quickly thrown into the fire as a regional EHS manager for the United States, Mexico, and Canada. Rather than shutting down in the face of early challenges, Ty leaned into his experiences, using them as opportunities to reflect and grow. After more than a decade at GE, he moved on to a new role where he built an organization’s safety program completely from the ground up.

In this episode of My Big Safety Challenge, Ty shares why building genuine connections across an organization—from the brand-new employee to the c-suite executive—is essential to creating a strong safety culture. He also discusses the importance of a glass-half-full mindset, offers practical insight on gaining leadership buy-in, and explains why it’s a strength, not a weakness, to ask for help.

From an Ohio farm to protecting tens of thousands of lives—this is safety leadership at its realest. In this episode of My Big Safety Challenge, Matthew Compher shares the hard-earned lessons that shaped his career, from steel mills and utilities to leading safety across high-risk industries. He challenges traditional safety thinking, introduces his “capacity model,” and explains why passion, humility, and influence matter more than checklists. If you care about leadership, safety, and getting people home alive, this episode is a must-listen.

From a landfill site in rural Vermont to helping protect more than 2 million employees at Walmart, Wendy Brant’s safety journey is anything but ordinary. In this episode of My Big Safety Challenge, the former Global VP of EHS Compliance at Walmart shares how “heat experiences,” strong relationships, and saying “I don’t know—yet” shaped her leadership style.

We talk confidence, mentorship (up, down, and sideways), navigating massive scale, and why clarity matters when one-in-a-million risks happen twice a day. Packed with real-world lessons, career wisdom, and honest insights, this episode is a must-listen for safety leaders at any stage.

Anthony Dohmann joins My Big Safety Challenge to share his unexpected journey into the safety profession and the experiences that shaped his leadership style. He discusses early career challenges, the shift from authority to influence, and how mentorship and relationships became central to his approach to safety.

He also reflects on navigating a workplace fatality, the importance of continuous learning, and why investing in others ultimately strengthens safety culture. This episode offers practical insight and inspiration for safety professionals at any stage of their career.

Stay connected with the My Big Safety Challenge podcast community. Follow us on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram.

Season 6 kicks off with hosts Merle Heckman and Shelley Baber as they talk with Shannon Overland, a seasoned safety leader whose journey began in the rugged forests of Western Canada. What started as a college job in tree planting evolved into co-owning a contracting company—and ultimately discovering what real safety leadership looks like.

Shannon shares the pivotal moments that reshaped her mindset, including a near-miss that changed her family business forever. She discusses how shifting from compliance to curiosity, from telling to asking, and from managing to developing people can dramatically strengthen safety culture.

Stay connected with the My Big Safety Challenge podcast community. Follow us on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram.

Welcome to Season 6 of My Big Safety Challenge — where real stories meet real leadership.

Hosted by Merle Heckman and Shelley Baber, Season 6 dives deeper than ever into the human side of safety. This season brings together industry experts, frontline leaders, and professionals from around the country who share candid conversations about the challenges, turning points, and breakthroughs that shape safer, stronger workplaces.

From transformative leadership experiences to the moments that changed everything, each episode reveals new insights into culture, communication, human performance, and what it truly means to lead with purpose.

Stay connected with the My Big Safety Challenge podcast community. Follow us on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram.

This week on My Big Safety Challenge, we sit down with David Musgrave. With a background in psychology, specifically in autism spectrum disorder and neurodiversity, David brings a human-centered lens to the safety world. Now serving as the Senior Vice President of DEKRA North America, he helps companies move beyond outdated thinking and platitudes to create lasting cultural changes. He even tracks worn-out phrases in what he playfully calls his list of “Dinosaur Safety Sentiments.”

David isn’t afraid to ask for the big things. He challenges the people he works with and believes technical jargon should stay with the technical folks. What matters more, he says, is connecting, building strong relationships that allow you to speak up, push back, and create meaningful progress.

Join us for this episode to hear why intentional leadership matters and how doing good work draws others in. David’s insights are smart, inspiring, and just a little bit rebellious.

Shelley Baber, CSP, began her career chasing perfection. She wanted to make an immediate impact and thought that if something wasn’t perfect, it wasn’t right. But after 25 years in the field, now serving as EHS Director for Eaton’s Electrical Engineering Services and Systems Division, she’s learned that real progress is made through baby steps, or, as she puts it, “Don’t let no progress get in the way of any progress.”

In this episode of My Big Safety Challenge, Shelley shares the lessons that have shaped her journey, starting with the power of building relationships in the workplace. She believes the best safety cultures feel like family, where trust and connection allow teams to grow together. At the same time, she’s clear that family outside of work comes first. For Shelley, it’s not about achieving a perfect balance between work and life. It’s about blending the two in a way that makes room for both.

You’ll also hear why mentoring is now at the heart of her mission and how safety professionals are in a unique position to make an impact at every level of an organization.

If you enjoy this conversation, keep an eye out for our next season of My Big Safety Challenge. Shelley will be joining us again, this time as cohost.

Heather MacDougall, a lawyer and advisory board member, was in Washington, D.C., when an offer to join the National Labor Relations Board under the Bush Administration changed her career trajectory forever.

A lawyer? On a safety and leadership podcast? It makes perfect sense, just trust us.

While she didn’t get that position, she did shortly thereafter become the Chief Counsel to the Chairman at the Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission, eventually becoming Commissioner of the Council before joining Amazon as the Chief Safety Officer.

See, we told you it would start to make sense.

From labor lawyer to leading safety at one of the world’s largest companies, Heather has shaped a powerful perspective on what it takes to lead in safety today and how innovation and technology are useful tools in reducing incidents. Tune into this episode of My Big Safety Challenge as Heather shares why she believes safety is never a finished product and why the constant pursuit of improvement is one of the field’s greatest strengths.

One of the more admirable, yet often overlooked, qualities of the safety profession is the spirit of camaraderie that exists even among industry competitors. As Marty Lalick, CSP, Associate Director at ESPN, shares in this episode of My Big Safety Challenge: “There are no trade secrets [in safety].”

This mindset of partnership is woven throughout the conversation, as Marty discusses the tremendous value of openly sharing safety best practices with other broadcast studios—a lesson he has carried through his 27 years of experience spanning environmental cleanup, rapid response, construction, manufacturing, and now television broadcasting.

How does someone with dreams of becoming a teacher find themselves leading remediation efforts at Ground Zero after 9/11? Tune in to Marty’s episode to hear his incredible story and explore how an educator’s perspective can transform the way we see the safety profession.

How many people is it acceptable to hurt at work?

That’s a question Will Hewett, Co-Founder & Director of Genii Earth LLC, learned from a colleague and incorporated into his own consultations. In 23 years of safety leadership consulting, where he reshapes the way people think about safety leadership, he’s never heard any other answer than zero.

That idea was what drew Will to the safety profession. He says that, while he never intended to become involved in the world of safety, it’s the way the safety industry treats employees like people, with humanity, that led to his involvement in the profession.

Looking for a different perspective on how to approach safety? One that incorporates ideas like invisible PPE and tells us that the most important person to change when it comes to safety is yourself? Tune into this episode of My Big Safety Challenge and find out why Will says being nice and non-confrontational isn’t always the right approach, and how working in the realm of stories and interpretation is essential to safety.

Alaina Ziegler, CSP, wants you to become a listener.

In this episode of My Big Safety Challenge, Alaina, Vice President of Safety & Human Performance at Lewis Services, unpacks why listening is much more effective when you’re listening to understand, not to respond.

Overseeing the safety of a dispersed, multilingual workforce across multiple states, Alaina faces communication challenges daily. That’s why her team leans into creative tech solutions like video messaging and equipping trucks with iPads to keep everyone connected and informed.

Additionally, you’ll hear Alaina shed light on why safety often lives in the gray areas and how strong leadership requires employees at every level to get out in the field and “trust but verify” how work is being done.