The Safety Spotlight

Six years ago, driving out of a northern Manitoba job site in a snowstorm, Jason Ross thought he was having a heart attack. It was a panic attack, and it put him on the path to talking openly about mental health with construction crews across Canada. Jason is a health and safety manager at Bird Construction with about 25 years in the industry. He chairs Bird's mental health employee resource g...

"If the people you work with don't like who you are, the message you send will never get out."Garrett Hill, Regional Safety Manager at EquipmentShare, started his safety career on high-rise demolition sites in Houston. Ten years later, he looks after safety across about 106 offices on the Gulf Coast and teaches the same OSHA 10 and 30 courses he started out with. In this episode of t...

Jacqueline Handy took a marketing job at a construction safety firm in New York City and had no idea what site safety was. Then she sat through her first board meeting, watched a room of tradesmen in Timbs and jeans start talking about projects and plans and mechanisms in words she'd never heard, and decided that was where she wanted to be. That was the front door. Almost nobody walks through...

Bill Hart is a fifth-generation miner from West Virginia. He watched his grandfather die of black lung when he was sixteen, and later watched the same disease take his father. He now starts work at a gold mine in South Carolina alongside his son, the sixth generation in the family to go underground. In this episode, Bill makes a case that most safety programs get backwards: safety isn't a prio...

A broken door handle nobody fixed will tell you more about your safety culture than your incident numbers will. Michael Bassey has spent two decades in process safety across Nigeria, Qatar, the UAE, Argentina and North America, leading high-risk, high-consequence investigations. In 2010 he ran one that was thorough, detailed, and well received by leadership. Eight months later the same facility tr...

Ask a room full of employees whose job safety is, and plenty of hands will point at the safety department.  Brian Fielkow  got that answer when he bought his own trucking company, and he calls it the wrong one.  Brian did not arrive in safety the usual way. He started out practising business law in Milwaukee, where meeting clients across a range of industries taught him to look for patterns. He we...

Ask most organizations how safety is going and they will hand you their incident numbers. Cody Woolf would rather know what happens on site when the senior leaders aren’t there. Cody didn’t come to safety the usual way either. He went to school for law enforcement and criminal justice, then spent his early career in commercial vehicle enforcement with the Alberta government, pulling vehicles over...

What can safety leaders in construction, oil and gas, and manufacturing learn from a workplace where you can't pause an emergency to fill out a hazard assessment? In this episode of Safety Spotlight, we sit down with Nicole Wetsch, Manager of Occupational Health and Safety for the Edmonton Police Service. Nicole started her career in medical microbiology and nanotechnology research before movi...

Ask most leaders if they have a good team and they'll say yes. Ken Larson's answer is that they have no idea what a real team is. In this episode of The Safety Spotlight, executive coach Ken Larson explains why most "teams" are really just a roster of talented people working near each other, not with each other. We get into interdependence, the misfire vs. the mishire, why you ge...

What happens when a safety professional stops writing policies and starts walking the floor instead?   In this episode of the Safety Spotlight Podcast, we sit down with Erin Heimbecker, Workplace Safety Specialist at the Saskatchewan Association for Safe Workplaces in Health (SASWH), to explore what it actually takes to build a safety culture that people believe in, not just comply with.  Erin&#39...

What does it take to keep millions of kilometers of road safe when 80% of everything we use every day depends on the people behind the wheel?  In this episode of the Safety Spotlight Podcast, we sit down with Mario Da Silva, Fleet Safety and Risk Management Leader at Manitoulin Transport, to explore what it really means to build a lasting safety culture inside one of Canada's most complex tran...

What does it really take to transform workplace safety from a compliance requirement into a deeply embedded culture? In this episode of the Safety Spotlight Podcast, we sit down with Tom Fitzgerald, founder of Safety Fitz LLC and a former foundry supervisor with over 50 years of experience in operations, HR, and safety leadership. Tom brings a rare perspective, having worked directly on the produc...

Psychological safety is often treated like something you install with a policy. But is it really a systems issue, or a leadership one? In this episode of Safety Spotlight, we sit down with Joan McMillan, Canadian Registered Safety Professional and PhD candidate in developmental psychology, to explore the human side of safety culture. With more than 20 years in health and safety, Joan brings a pers...

A lot of companies say “safety first.” Darren Varga, Director of EHS at Aecon Group Inc., argues that misses the point. If people do not trust the system, they stop talking, and that is when risk quietly stacks up. In this episode of  The Safety Spotlight , Darren shares how an ergonomics and biomechanics background, along with time as a Ministry of Labour inspector and global consultant, has shap...

Silica exposure is one of the oldest known occupational hazards in the world, yet it remains widely misunderstood, under-prioritized, and routinely mismanaged across modern industries.   In this episode of The Safety Spotlight , we sit down with Nayab Sultan , an occupational and environmental health specialist with decades of international experience, to unpack why silica continues to pose such a...

"If I don't have room to improve, the system is broken." That is the philosophy that drives Rick Sikora, CEO of Cranemasters. In this episode of The Safety Spotlight, Rick shares why he questioned the validity of a 97% audit score - and why questioning what we do is the only way to fight complacency. Rick breaks down the critical difference between "common sense" and "...

In this episode of Safety Spotlight, we sit down with Tyler Foley, a former stuntman turned safety consultant and the founder of Total Buy-In HSE Consulting. Tyler shares his unique backstory, moving from performing six-story high falls into cardboard boxes to managing safety in high-risk industries, revealing how the principles of stunt work - like engineering controls and redundancy - directly t...

In this episode, we sit down with Sarah Rasoul, a Top Woman in Safety and safety leader at Toyota Motor Manufacturing Canada. Sarah shares how an unexpected career path led her into occupational health and safety, and why proactive,prevention-focused work became her mission. She breaks down the power of a strong communication culture, the importance of worker engagement, and how tools like near mi...

Safety did not start as the headline for Jeff Mulligan , it became the mission. In this episode of Safety Spotlight , Jeff, COO of Astec Safety and an early catalyst behind Utility Safety Partners , explains how risk management evolved from a back-office function into a leadership priority. He also exposes the next big challenge facing safety leaders everywhere: aging, hidden infrastructure. How d...

Linda Miller never set out to transform how people move and work. Her early goal as a rehabilitation specialist was to help them recover. But after seeing how preventable injuries could derail entire careers, she started asking a powerful question: why are we treating the damage instead of preventing it? That question led her to ergonomics and a lifelong mission to design work that fits people, no...

In this powerful episode of Safety Spotlight , we sit down with Spencer Beach , a third-generation tradesman turned professional safety speaker, whose life was forever changed by a devastating workplace fire in 2003. What followed was more than a physical recovery. It was a complete transformation in how he understood safety, leadership, and purpose. Spencer recounts the day everything changed, th...

In this episode of Safety Spotlight , we sit down with Mike Schwarz , CEO of MyZone AI , for a candid look at the AI revolution already transforming how businesses operate. From his early dot-com ventures to leading large-scale automation projects, Mike shares real insights on how organizations can harness AI for massive ROI. He reveals how automation can streamline up to 90% of operations , why h...

In this episode of Safety Spotlight , we sit down with Jeff “Odie” Espenship , former A-10 Warthog pilot and founder of Target Leadership , for an unforgettable conversation about safety, culture, and the choices that define leadership. Odie shares hard-earned lessons from 10,000 feet up and from rock bottom, revealing how the smallest decisions can change everything. His message is clear: safety...

From Fulbright scholar to Facebook Europe’s early days to bestselling author, Mehmet Baha’s journey is anything but ordinary. In this episode of Safety Spotlight , Baha joins us from Berlin to unpack what psychological safety really means and why it is the backbone of high-performing, human-centered workplaces. We dig into the practical side of leadership, including how to build trust, communicate...

Join a conversation with Greg “Boss” Wooldridge , the only leader to command the U.S. Navy Blue Angels three times, as he translates elite aviation lessons into everyday leadership that scales safety and results. From carrier decks to corporate operations, Greg shows how trust built under pressure enables teams to perform with consistency without compromising safety. Greg’s path started on aircraf...