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Invited Conference Guest Speakers

Jordan Barab
Deputy Assistant Secretary and Acting Assistant Secretary for Occupational Safety and Health

Jordan Barab joined OSHA as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Labor for Occupational Safety and Health as well as Acting Assistant Secretary on April 13, 2009.

He previously served as Special Assistant to the Assistant Secretary of Labor for OSHA from 1998 to 2001, when he helped the Agency to promulgate the ergonomics workplace

safety and health standard that was repealed by Congress in March 2001.

For the House Education and Labor Committee, he was Senior Labor Policy Advisor for health and safety from 2007 to April 2009.

Mr. Barab worked on workplace safety issues for the U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board from 2002 to 2007; he was a Health and Safety Specialist for the AFL-CIO from 2001 to 2002; and he directed the safety and health program for the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees from 1982 to 1998.

He also created and wrote the award-winning weblog, Confined Space, from 2003 to 2007.

He holds a master's degree from The Johns Hopkins University and an undergraduate degree from Claremont McKenna College.
 

Dennis C. Hendershot
Chemical Engineer

Dennis C. Hendershot is a chemical engineer (BS, Lehigh University and MS, University of Pennsylvania) with 39 years of experience. From 1970 to 2005 he worked at Rohm and Haas Company (Philadelphia, PA) in a variety of research and development, plant design, plant startup, and process safety positions.

Beginning in 1983, he developed

 
process safety management systems, standards, and process hazard and risk analysis tools for Rohm and Haas, provided process safety support for new and existing facilities throughout the world, developed incident investigation methodologies, and investigated incidents.

In 2005, Dennis retired from Rohm and Haas as a Senior Technical Fellow and worked as a Principal Process Safety Specialist for Chilworth Technology Inc. until the end of 2008. He is a Staff Consultant for the Center for Chemical Process Safety (CCPS) of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE), serving as editor of the CCPS Process Safety Beacon, and working with the Inherently Safer Design and Risk Tolerance Criteria Subcommittees.

In 2005-2007, he was a member of the BP North American Refineries Independent Safety Panel, chaired by former Secretary of State James Baker, which issued its final report in January 2007.

Dennis has been active in professional activities. He is an AIChE Fellow, and served on the AIChE Board of Directors from 2001 through 2003. He was Chair of the Safety and Health Division of AIChE in 1998, and also chaired the AIChE Loss Prevention Programming Group in 2002-2003. He is a CCPS Fellow, and chaired the Risk Analysis, Hazard Evaluation, Inherently Safer Design, and Undergraduate Education Subcommittees.

He serves on the editorial board of several journals and magazines, and has authored over 50 technical papers and articles. In 2000 Dennis was presented with the Merit Award for contributions to chemical process safety by the Mary Kay O’Connor Process Safety Center at Texas A&M University. In 2006, AIChE presented Dennis with the Norton H. Walton/Russell L. Miller Award in Safety and Loss Prevention.
 

Les Leopold
Executive Director of the Labor Institute and Public Health Institute

After attending Oberlin College and Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs (MPA 1975), Les co-founded and currently directs two non-profit educational organizations:

He designs research and educational programs on occupational safety and health, the environment and economics. He is now helping to
form an alliance between the United Steel Workers Union and the Sierra Club. 


Les is the author of The Man who Hated Work and Loved Labor:  The Life and Times of Tony Mazzocchi which won the Independent Book Publishers Gold Medal for biography of the year.  His current book is The Looting of America:  How Wall Street’s Game of Fantasy Finance Destroyed our Jobs, our Pensions and our Prosperity…And what we can do about it.
 

Glenn S. Podonsky
Chief Health, Safety and Security Officer

Mr. Glenn S. Podonsky is the Energy Department’s Chief Health, Safety and Security Officer. He reports directly to the Office of the Secretary of Energy and manages the major staff organizations responsible for health, safety, and security policy development, assistance, training, enforcement, and the development and deployment of new security technology. He also is responsible  
for the independent oversight of environment, safety, and health, safeguards and security, cyber security, and emergency management programs within the Department and the National Nuclear Security Administration.

Mr. Podonsky’s independent oversight program is the only one of its kind within the executive branch of the government, which has become an important catalyst for dramatic improvements and substantial savings in safety and security. His office also operates the National Training Center, a center for safety and security training designed to ensure appropriate and effective training of federal and contractor personnel involved in protecting vital national resources.

Over the past 25 years with the Department of Energy, Mr. Podonsky has held a number of senior positions of ever increasing positive influence on departmental operations; from Director of the Office of Security Evaluations, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Oversight, Director of the Office of Independent Oversight and Performance Assurance, Director of the Office of Security and Safety Performance Assurance, to the position he now holds.

Prior to joining the Department of Energy in 1984, Mr. Podonsky served as a nuclear materials inspector and conducted analytical evaluations of the nonproliferation programs of the United Nations International Atomic Energy Agency member states, including Korea, Taiwan, and Japan. In 1979, as a private consultant, he was responsible for completing a study of the technical qualifications required for nuclear power plant operators in order to mitigate a Three Mile Island type nuclear accident. While at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, he served as a licensing official for the non-power reactor program.

Steven Markowitz, MD
Specializing in Occupational and Environmental Medicine

Dr. Markowitz is currently Director of the Center for the Biology of Natural Systems (CBNS) and Professor of Environmental Sciences at Queens College, City University of New York. He is also Adjunct Professor of Community and Preventive Medicine at Mount Sinai School of Medicine, where he was on the full-time faculty from 1986 to 1998.

He received his undergraduate

 
education at Yale University and his medical degree from the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Columbia University.  Dr. Markowitz is board-certified in occupational and environmental medicine and internal medicine.

With the United Steelworkers International Union and the Atomic Trades & Labor Council, Dr. Markowitz currently directs the Worker Health Protection Program, a comprehensive medical screening program for former Department of Energy workers who built the nuclear weapon arsenal of the United States over the past 60 years. This program also sponsors the largest early lung cancer detection project in occupational health in the country through the application of low dose helical CAT scanning. To date, over 9,000 workers who were exposed to asbestos, uranium, and other lung carcinogens have been screened for lung cancer in this program. 

Dr. Markowitz directs the Queens College satellite clinical center of the Mount Sinai-based World Trade Center (WTC) Medical Monitoring Program and monitors nearly 1,500 WTC workers. This program documents what has happened to WTC workers and is now initiating a treatment program.

Dr. Markowitz is co-investigator, with Saru Jayaraman and the Restaurant Opportunity Center of New York and NYCOSH, of a NIEHS/NIOSH-funded environmental justice grant to document and intervene to improve the health and working conditions of immigrant restaurant workers in New York City. Previously, Dr. Markowitz and CBNS colleagues sponsored a medical screening project for immigrant WTC day laborers near Ground Zero in early 2002.

Dr. Markowitz’ research interests center on occupational and environmental disease surveillance; occupational cancer; asbestos-related diseases; and the burden and costs of occupational diseases and injuries.  He is Associate Editor with William Rom MD of a major textbook, Environmental and Occupational Medicine. In 2000, he co-authored a landmark book, Costs of Occupational Injuries and Illnesses (University of Michigan Press). Dr. Markowitz is Editor-in-Chief of the American Journal of Industrial Medicine and is on the editorial board of three other peer-reviewed journals.  He has additionally served as a consultant to the World Health Organization, the Pan American Health Organization, and the Department of Energy. From 2001 to 2003, Dr. Markowitz served on the Worker Advocacy Advisory Committee of the Department of Energy.
 

Peg Seminario
Director of Safety and Health, AFL-CIO

Peg Seminario is the Director, Safety and Health at the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO).  Peg graduated from Harvard University School of Public Health in June of 1977 with a Master’s of Science Degree in Industrial Hygiene and received her undergraduate degree in Biological Sciences from Wellesley College in 1975. She began her career as an Intern in 1977 at the AFL-CIO in the Research Department
for Occupational Health and Safety where she held a variety of positions from Industrial Hygienist at the Department of Occupational Safety and Health, to Associate Director from 1983-1990 and then became the Director of Department of Occupational Safety and Health in 1990.

The AFL-CIO coordinates health and safety activities with the affiliate unions.  Peg has led this coordination for many years.  She also currently serves or has served as a representative for Organized Labor and Workers on a variety of committees or panels.  She speaks regularly as the voice of Health and Safety from Organized Labor at various Union and professional conferences.  She has provided testimony numerous times to Congress and regulatory agencies on various health and safety matters.

She has been the recipient of many national respected honors and awards during her career such as the Alice Hamilton Award from the American Industrial Hygiene Association in 2001 and received the William Lloyd Award from the United Steelworkers in 1997.

Michael P. Wilson
Research Scientist with the Center for Occupational and Environmental Health (COEH)

Michael P. Wilson, PhD, MPH, is a research scientist with the Center for Occupational and Environmental Health (COEH), School of Public Health, University of California, Berkeley. Dr. Wilson conducts research and practice in chemicals policy, exposure assessment, and occupational safety and health. He earned a masters degree (MPH, 1998) and doctoral degree (PhD, 2003) in industrial hygiene and environmental
health sciences at the University of California, Berkeley.  He earned a bachelors degree in biology from the University of California, Santa Cruz, in 1984.

Dr. Wilson is the chief author of a 2006 report to the California Legislature, Green Chemistry in California: A Framework for Leadership in Chemicals Policy and Innovation and a lead author of a January 2008 report, Green Chemistry: Cornerstone to a Sustainable California for California EPA. These reports helped set the stage for new California legislation and the California Green Chemistry Initiative. He serves on the state’s Green Ribbon Science Panel and Biomonitoring Program Scientific Guidance Panel. He previously served as a field representative for SEIU Local 250 and as President of IAFF Local 1270 during 13 years of work as a firefighter, paramedic and EMT in the emergency services of California’s central coast region.

Mark R. Briggs
CSP - OSHA Safety Engineer

Mark graduated with his Bachelor of Science Degree in Engineering/Industrial Engineering from New Mexico State University.

He has been a Compliance Officer with OSHA since 1989. Prior to his transfer to be part of the Process Safety Management Team in Houston, TX, Mark worked in Ft. Worth.  In June 2001 he was promoted to the Compliance Assistant Specialist Job. 

In 2006, Mark became a Certified Safety Professional.

In December of 2008, Mark was promoted to the level of Area Director for the Houston South Office.