My Big Safety Challenge

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.