In honor of National Hispanic Heritage Month, our guest is Rony Jabour, Founder & CEO of United Safety Net, a leading safety training and consulting organization serving the construction industry across the United States. Rony brings a deeply personal and profoundly human perspective to the safety profession, one shaped not by textbooks or certifications, but by lived experience, loss, and purpose.
Rony shares the story of losing his father at six years old to a preventable workplace accident in the Amazon forest. That moment — the instant he “became the man of the house” — shaped his life’s mission: ensuring no family endures what his family endured. After immigrating to the United States and working in construction, he witnessed unsafe conditions firsthand. An OSHA visit changed his trajectory, leading him to become a translator, then a trainer, and ultimately a national voice for culturally competent safety education.
Throughout the episode, we explore the intersection of language, culture, and psychosocial safety. Rony explains why many organizations misdiagnose their challenges as “language problems” when they are actually culture problems — differences in communication norms, authority dynamics, educational backgrounds, and lived experiences. Silence in a training room doesn’t mean understanding; it often means fear, shame, or cultural conditioning.
We also discuss how psychosocial hazards show up long before physical ones: workers distracted by family crises, immigrants carrying the weight of two countries, and supervisors unaware of how tone, customs, or assumptions create risk.
Rony’s message is clear: safety is human. It requires humility, curiosity, trust, and cultural awareness. And above all, every worker, regardless of language, background, or birthplace, deserves to go home safely every single day.
Music from #Uppbeat (free for Creators!):
https://uppbeat.io/t/dope-cat/chill-fm