Ripples that change the world
For Joan, safety, health, and environmental improvement is all about leading from the front – and in an extensive career spanning everything from hazardous waste management to the US$1.4 billion Spallation Neutron Source program at Oak Ridge National Labs (ORNL) in Tennessee, she is proud to have used her safety leadership position to innovate changes that have delivered better outcomes for people and programs alike – and left a sustainable legacy for the future. “I call it the ripple effect,” she explains. “Make an impression on the water, and the ripples keep going, so that even long after they’re out of view, they’re still changing lives for the better.”
Do the right thing, get the best outcome
It was seeing the appalling, “life-changing” consequences of poor practices first-hand that made Joan determined to do things differently. Along the way, she helped transformed the reputation of a recycling business, then moved to complex construction programs, where she learned the value of communication in safety leadership from a Program Manager who was “always outside, in his boots, talking to everybody, asking what was difficult and what could be done better.”
“The team wants to do the right thing,” she explains, “so you have to do the right thing by them – and that means being open and approachable, and listening to their concerns.” Joan also emphasizes that a great outcome in her discipline can positively influence the success of the program as a whole. Her work at ORNL, for example, enabled a 1.1 million man-hour program to be delivered without a single loss-time injury.
Embrace the vision, improve the reality
Joan describes Program Management as an “exciting and visionary” environment for her discipline, where every meeting generates new challenges, but where “all the light-bulbs come on” to help her drive viable improvements in how programs enable people to live day-to-day.
For her, this will also mean delving deeper and further into the program supply chain, to ensure alignment with appropriate practices from start to finish, and support the delivery of programs that are not only safe, environmentally sustainable, and responsible, but that will stand the test of time.