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#37: Lorraine Martin, NSC President and CEO at NSC 2019
64 Plays6 years ago
New President and CEO of the National Safety Council talks with podcast host and Vivid Learning Systems Chief Safety Officer, Jill James live from the floor of the 2019 NSC Expo.
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Transcript
Introduction and Guest Introduction
00:00:10
Speaker
This is the Accidental Safety Pro, live at the 2019 National Safety Congress and Expo in sunny San Diego. Welcome to the show for everybody who's listening. My name is Jill James, Vivid's Chief Safety Officer, and today I'm joined by Lorraine Martin, who is President and CEO of the National Safety Council, new President of the Safety Council. Welcome to the show. Oh, thank you, Jill. Really appreciate you taking time out of the Congress to do this with us.
Lorraine's Early Career Journey
00:00:40
Speaker
So I was explaining before we started recording that the podcast is all about people sharing their stories and how safety kind of came into their life, understanding that we all kind of came at it accidentally as one of the podcast intents.
00:00:59
Speaker
So you have quite an extensive history with Lockheed Martin as an engineer, correct? Yeah. So when you were a little girl, what did you think was going to happen? Or when people said, what do you want to be when you grow up? What was your answer when you were little?
00:01:18
Speaker
That's a great question and in some sense I'm an accidental engineer as well. I always enjoyed science and biology and understanding how things ticked. At first I actually thought I was going to be a marine biologist.
00:01:35
Speaker
But I applied for an Air Force scholarship and when you do that, they ask you to be in a certain profession and they gave me a scholarship in math. So that meant I needed to kind of step back a bit. But math and computer science and engineering are still
00:01:52
Speaker
in that world of discovery, of trying to problem solve, of looking at a problem and saying, how do I see myself through this? So from that math scholarship and entering the US Air Force, I ended up in the computer science field.
Software and Safety in the Air Force
00:02:06
Speaker
And it was an incredible opportunity to be a little bit on the forefront at that time of how software was going to be brought into the systems that we used around the world in a very new way. And so math,
00:02:21
Speaker
and a young woman. That's already unusual for a particular time in history, right? And so was it something that you always loved?
00:02:31
Speaker
I was always good at that. And I had parents, thankfully, that said you can do anything that you want to do. You can go anywhere you want to go. And so there were no boundaries on that. And when the scholarship came up, it necessarily wasn't something that I said, I'm a math person. But I said, I can do this. And this could be really exciting to be able to take.
00:02:54
Speaker
that new experience and see where it went. So there weren't very many females, to your point, in the Air Force at that time in general in the officer ranks. This would be back in the early 80s. And there weren't that many folks in my engineering, mathematics, or computer science courses. But I showed up, brought what I was given
Transition to Lockheed Martin and Safety Focus
00:03:18
Speaker
through my education and through the confidence I was given as a child and was able to be successful. What made you choose the Air Force? How did that part come in? It was a scholarship, truthfully. I went through ROTC, which is an officer training course. You don't go to the academies, you can go to a regular university, and then they pay for your college costs.
00:03:41
Speaker
And, you know, I was actually I was always in Drum and Bugle Corps. I don't know if you're familiar with that, but it's a I was in marching band similar. Okay. So I always enjoyed the teamwork, the collaboration.
00:03:55
Speaker
of different disciplines, in that case horns and drums and plaques coming together to create something bigger than any of the individual activities. And I enjoyed all of that camaraderie and the discipline, as I said. And so I had a little bit of a taste of some of that world, although the services are so much more than that. But as a kid, you know, you know of those things.
00:04:20
Speaker
And I also enjoyed the fact that it was going to be able to be in the science career field. So when the scholarship was offered, I said, you know, let's give this a try. So what's your alma mater? I went to DePaul University with a W at the end. So that's where I did my undergraduate and also got my Air Force courses. And then I did Boston University for my graduate degree. And what was your instrument in the drum and beat? I played a mellophone.
00:04:47
Speaker
It's a that's what my son plays does he yes the marching French horn. It's a marching. Thank you Exactly. Yeah, you take a French horn and kind of straighten it out a little bit It's a beautiful instrument and you must have really good pitch to be able to pray the French horn I am NOT going to go anywhere All right, so no singing Oh Fascinating so you finish
00:05:15
Speaker
So what happened next? You're working on your degree, you're simultaneously working with the Air Force and the Air Force. What happens with your career? Yeah, so I was doing primarily software related things at the time for the Air Force, which was really great because it was kind of the dawn of understanding how to do software in a rigorous way, how to do it on a
00:05:36
Speaker
a schedule in very complex applications, and also computer security was just brand new at that time, so I got a chance to work with the team in the Air Force that was responsible for computer security guidelines, how do we even think about separating information at the time, so it was really kind of groundbreaking for both software and computer security related work, and then also a little bit of artificial intelligence or expert systems as we called them then.
00:06:02
Speaker
Yeah, so were there points in time where you saw safety weaving in as you're looking back at your career now? So I would say in the Air Force and in any of our service members, you know that what you're coming to do every day is to protect our nation. And in doing so, ensure that the men and women who were asked to do things around the world, either for our country or our allies, can do so safely.
00:06:28
Speaker
with the products that we give them and come home safely to their families. So any service member, whether it's in the military services or if it's in search and rescue firefighters place, you know why you're there. And it's protection of some cause, of some human being, of some asset. And so it's ingrained very early on when you're in the military service about the issue of safety
00:06:51
Speaker
and of human life. From there, I went to Lockheed Martin, which I hope we'll talk a little bit about. Yes, of course, please. And I got a chance to then build some of the products that we were going to be providing to the men and women in the services. And very clearly, that product has to work every single time so that, in this case, when I was in the aircraft side of the house, that that pilot came home safely. They could do what we were asking them to do and return to their family at night in very high-consequence areas.
00:07:20
Speaker
You know, safety either in the services or when you're building products to support the service members, it's not a question, it's an imperative. It is what you come to work every day to ensure that you can serve those people and serve them well. On top of that, you're building very complex systems. So all of the issues of construction, manufacturing safety, you know, hazardous safety of materials,
00:07:46
Speaker
is all part of than the employees that are building those products. So it's really both sides of that equation. The employees in keeping them safe and then the folks that use your products ensuring that they come home safe from
Mentorship and Career Growth
00:07:58
Speaker
their mission. So it's almost as if safety is the job.
00:08:02
Speaker
Yeah, definitely woven tightly in it. So how did your career progress within Lockheed from what you started with there? Sure. So I started in software, so some of the work that I've been doing in the Air Force, so command and control systems, systems that say what things need to be where, people, assets, airplanes, and some intelligence systems as well that were very software intensive, but complex. From there, I actually got involved in pilot training.
00:08:31
Speaker
And pilot training are high-end simulators with visuals and sound. In some cases even, you know, they move so they have some kind of motion to put a pilot through a simulated environment so that they can know what an emergency condition would be like, you know, what kind of situation they need to be in if they have enemy fire. So, again... Makes total sense that that would be what you did to move towards it. A lot of software, had some hardware characteristics to it too.
00:09:00
Speaker
But it brought me to the world of pilots. When I was in the Air Force, I wasn't a pilot. As I just mentioned, I was in the software field. But a lot of the focus and mission of the Air Force is to aim high and go where we need to go from the air and space to be able to do the things that we ask them to do. And getting closer to pilots in the pilot training business brought me closer to that kind of core of the Air Force's mission.
00:09:28
Speaker
And some of the key products that Lockheed Martin built in that are aircraft and airplanes. So from the simulator world that I was working in, I then was asked to lead some of our cargo airplane developments and renovations for the C-5 fleet and C-130. These are large cargo aircraft that are used by our services and others. And then eventually the F-35 program, which is a fighter aircraft, a stealth fighter aircraft.
00:09:55
Speaker
So you talk about adaptability, right? As this career has, is that exciting for you? I mean, were you always kind of looking around the corner for the next thing? Like a bit of information, maybe adrenaline junkie and like, I want to know more and what can I do?
00:10:13
Speaker
That's a great question and I often mentor a lot of folks along that incredible career that I had the honor to be part of and I will often say that the thing that really fueled me was to learn more and grow and give more and contribute.
00:10:27
Speaker
So if you get motivated by those two aspects of your career, things are gonna come your way. People are gonna ask you to do more if you're always contributing that one day, that one extra inch in the thing that you're doing today. And to me, that's so much more powerful than being impatient and wanting to know when I'm gonna get promoted or wanting to know when I'm gonna get the next big job. They come so much faster if you're really just focused on your own growth and contribution to the mission
Foundation of Pegasus Springs Foundation
00:10:56
Speaker
at hand.
00:10:56
Speaker
So who mentored you early on in your career, particularly as a minority female, I'm guessing, including at Lockheed, probably at that time. Who were your mentors? That's a great question. I had someone in the Air Force early on, Captain Joe Itz.
00:11:13
Speaker
And he was amazing because he also, like my parents, just said, you can do anything. There were no boundaries. And that really helped starting in my career to make sure that I had that perspective. As I came into Lockheed Martin, there were a variety of mentors and coaches all along the way. The corporation has many big aerospace
00:11:34
Speaker
and large corporate global organizations are very intentional about providing mentorship, providing support for understanding what next and giving you those skill sets. So it's baked into the cake essentially. It is baked into the cake. And those mentors were all kinds of folks from all different
00:11:52
Speaker
diversity and disciplines as well, which I think is very powerful. You don't just want to have engineers or software folks helping you, you know, maybe get a mentor who's the general counsel. They're going to give you a very different perspective. Especially as you grow in your career as a leader, you need to understand all those different facets of the business.
00:12:11
Speaker
So at what point in your career, this is something that I've been coming to the realization of in the last couple of years, where you become the mentor, right? And yeah. Yeah. I think along the way, you gather people who see that you might be able to give them something. So they just kind of naturally come to you and you need to be open and know that that's the engagement that's coming your way. You're supposed to be giving back. Yeah.
00:12:36
Speaker
But I actually had an event that was a little bit eye-opening. It was a tipping point for me in my responsibility to be a mentor. And I went to a diversity and inclusion event that included white males and folks from all different walks of life and females as well. And I realized that my journey as a female through the technology field, through my education, wasn't the same as all other females.
00:13:02
Speaker
And some of them had struggles that, for whatever reason, I didn't see or didn't experience. And I needed to make sure that I was reaching out and providing more assistance, more mentorship, not assuming that everybody necessarily had the path that I had had. So it was a big wake-up call. And it was a switch for me immediately that I needed to show up and to add more to show that people like
00:13:27
Speaker
me, people like whoever somebody thinks they are, can be successful. And my mentorship accountability got ratcheted up quite a bit personally because I felt I needed to,
Mentorship and Representation in STEM
00:13:39
Speaker
I owed more. Is that where the Pegasus Springs Foundation came from? Well, the Pegasus Springs Foundation is primarily founded, thank you for asking about it, it is a non-profit that my husband and I have formed recently that is focused on educational equity. And having that conversation here in the US primarily
00:13:56
Speaker
for teachers, for student leaders, about how we make sure our unconscious biases aren't leaking into how we educate, train and collaborate as educators. I wasn't an educator but my husband was so he comes from that world and I come from the passion of
00:14:13
Speaker
helping everybody succeed, helping everybody live their fullest and specifically helping young women see that they have no boundaries. So how long has the foundation been around? It's been around about a year in place and we've held one conference already with in partnership with Disney in the summer and we're gonna do another one here in December all around equity and
00:14:36
Speaker
and leadership for both students and teachers. Fantastic. Yeah, so that leads right into talking about STEM. I mean, this is all tied in with it, right? It is. And getting equity in the STEM practices as well, and particularly for women and minorities. So what do you think that looks like?
00:15:00
Speaker
in this field. I mean I know what it looks like for I've been in safety 25 years and I know that I'm still a minority. I know there's more of us coming. But how do you think that we as female leaders can be laying our hands on that encouragement and change for people?
00:15:20
Speaker
So we touched on one before, and it is the mentorship, it is the sponsorship, and I use that word actually more intentionally than mentorship, but to really sponsor others in your organization, perhaps cross organizations to ensure that people, if they have looked them over in some way, or had a bias they didn't even know they had, to make sure you pull those people up.
00:15:42
Speaker
In any organization that you're in, you can be very intentional about ensuring that your slates for who you're looking at for promotion or hiring have diverse candidates on them, women and others. And some of those things you just have to be very, very intentional about. And again, to use your term, to bake it in to how you do business.
00:16:00
Speaker
At the same time that coaching and mentorship is so important, there's been studies done by a variety of philanthropies that look at why aren't young girls as early as middle school getting into, even today, some of the science and technology fields. It's actually going the wrong direction, which is alarming. And the studies all show that for young girls,
00:16:22
Speaker
they look at things that they want to do in their life or as they start to get excited about things and they look at the people around them. Yes. That's the first one. Yes. I'll come back to that. Okay. The second is that they are looking for something that can be creative and have impact in the world. And we hear that a lot from the generation of young adults that are coming up. Those are things that really fuel our population right now. And for whatever reason, they look at science and technology and say,
00:16:50
Speaker
Those two aren't those two things. That blows me away. There's a TED talk that's called Badass Scientists. They're all females. And what they're doing is absolutely creative and changing the world. But we haven't made that connection for young girls. And the study showed that if you don't catch young girls literally between the ages of 6 and 12,
Encouraging Diversity in STEM Mentorship
00:17:12
Speaker
very early and have them see others, see other women, examples that are doing things in science and technology that are deemed to be creative and changing the world, that they miss that connection. The optics are so important that we can see our skin suit in someone who is... Whoever you think you are. Whoever you think you are, that's right. That people like me can do that and be successful
00:17:39
Speaker
and be rewarded and have joy from doing it. So you have to bring examples to those young girls. So going to the schools, bringing scientists in there. And that study also said that a lot of times it doesn't have to be in the school.
00:17:55
Speaker
it could be the soccer teacher who is female on the saturday soccer field who also happens to be a biology research person and brings that story to the soccer team about who they are that they can be this and you can be this and this is really fun and cool so outside the schools are really important so when i speak to college campuses or even workplaces about this issue of diversity inclusion i'll end by saying
00:18:21
Speaker
Every single person in this room needs to find three girls in the next three months because you do interact with that many young girls and go bring them your story. Go bring this to life for them so that they know that at least they met one person if they have an inclination of math and science and tinkering and understanding things that they can see that personification of what it could be. And this research says that can change everything.
00:18:47
Speaker
So we have a job to do. We have a really big job to do. Many years ago, I was invited to a college campus as a panel of women in STEM to talk about our jobs and what we did. And so those things have been happening, but I don't think they happen with as much purpose as they need to. And so maybe one of the things that we need to be doing is saying, hey, I'll volunteer for that. Could you put something
00:19:13
Speaker
And then just to ask the questions, ask the questions, my son's been part of a robotics team for the last couple of years and it's organized by this world organization that pulls it together and I pay attention to the girls that are on these teams.
00:19:30
Speaker
First, there aren't many, and then I started adding up, how many of the girls are driving the robot, not many? I started, like, the optics of what I'm, so then I started asking questions of the organization, like, why aren't there, why aren't the girls driving? And I got answers like, well, they really like to do support, and I went, and then someone caught their words and said,
00:19:58
Speaker
Yeah, so we need to be challenging and asking those questions, right? So you've just sparked something for me because I think this is just as pertinent in the workplace. Yes. And making sure that we all bring our voice to the table. Because there are times, like in your robotics example, that I think some women don't come to the table or they don't bring their voice to the table. And that's part of the coaching I've been doing is know your stuff, know your craft, whether it's safety or whatever it is. Yes. Know your craft and then bring it. Yeah.
00:20:27
Speaker
Because if you're not, you're the only one who can choose not to bring your voice.
Joining the National Safety Council
00:20:30
Speaker
Somebody else can choose to try to shut you down, but you're the one choosing not to come to the table. So get to the table. So you made a decision to do a career shift after 30 years with Lockheed and said yes to the safety council. What made you say yes?
00:20:49
Speaker
So after 35 years in the aerospace and industry, so with Air Force, I was at a point, especially with looking at the nonprofit foundation we set up as saying, how can I give back? And I looked at a variety of nonprofit activities in the world. This one really rang a bell because not only do I get to bring some of my experience of being in the workplace and seeing safety as a
00:21:14
Speaker
incredibly important piece of how you get your work done. I also can bring the business side of what I have. And the National Safety Council, as you can see, does big things. We're sitting here on the expo floor, pulling this off. It takes a team that really does know a lot about management and schedules and planning. So 35 years of doing very complex business and product development. I can bring some of that to the council, and not all foundations.
00:21:43
Speaker
And not all non-profit organizations have this kind of complexity. We also build products at the Council. So we have training products and materials that have to be high quality and produced efficiently and distributed to the folks that need to get them. And some of the experience I've had in business can be brought to bear there.
00:22:01
Speaker
incredible mission, the nonprofit focus I was looking for, and a business side of it, that I can bring some of that experience that will be rewarding for me to contribute, but also help the organization grow,
Addressing Workplace Safety Challenges
00:22:14
Speaker
I hope. Right, right. And so you've been at the job for
00:22:18
Speaker
97 days and you're pulling off I mean isn't this touted as the world's largest it is the world's largest yeah we have over a thousand exhibitors on this floor here 14,000 attendees wow we had the opening ceremony yesterday which I was honored to address and I think there were some
00:22:37
Speaker
I don't know, 9,000 between the main floor and the overflow rooms that were hearing our keynote speaker who was amazing. So yeah, it's big. Yeah, and 97 days into the job. Congratulations. Well, I have an incredible team, so I can't take any credit really for that.
00:22:54
Speaker
They're an amazing, passionate team that comes to work every day, literally, to save lives. Yes, absolutely. And if you're looking for a next journey, you know, what is better than that? To wake up every day and say, how can we address workplace fatalities and injuries? How can we address the opioid crisis around?
00:23:11
Speaker
our country. We're starting to look at issues having to do with fatigue in the workplace, looking at cannabis and the complexity of that as companies try to navigate it. Yeah, so are those some of the things that you kind of have in your mind right now as the focus for your tenure? Yeah, so we follow the data. So we first need to look at what is causing injuries and fatalities in the workplace and in our community. We are looking at the challenge
00:23:39
Speaker
from the workplace to any place, which is what our heritage has been. And the issues in the workplace are the same issues that are in our communities. Number one fatality in workplace is still driving. We ask a lot of employees to get in vehicles or to be around vehicles.
00:23:58
Speaker
Unfortunately, many of them have incidents associated with that. So we've got to double down on defensive driving techniques. And we have some toolkits for workplace on the issue of driving. Next in line, though, is impairment. And it comes in all kinds of forms. Human beings come to work. Talk more about what that is. Human beings come to work to do very tough things. We ask them to put new processes in place, be more efficient, look out for the next hazards.
00:24:24
Speaker
And sometimes they come to work tired. Perhaps they had issues at home. Perhaps they've been prescribed medicines that cause them not to be as alert as they should. They all say don't operate any equipment. They could be struggling with a substance misuse issue.
00:24:40
Speaker
And we need to know how to keep them safe as they come into the workplace and those around them. So we are actually unveiling and announced it yesterday two new toolkits for workplace, one on opioids and one on fatigue. And you can go by our booth, I think it's around the corner there, to get some assistance in your workplace on these very critical issues of how to
00:25:02
Speaker
see it, how to do something about it, how to have dignity for employees that are struggling with things, and how to help them return to the workplace. Because all the data says, if an employer steps in to help somebody who's struggling, they are a higher performing employee on the other end of that than your average employee. So let's step up.
Leadership and Engagement in Safety
00:25:20
Speaker
Yeah. I've recently been talking with and had a guest on the podcast who has actually two guests talking about mindfulness and safety and its connection.
00:25:31
Speaker
And we use terms like pay attention.
00:25:35
Speaker
be present, you know, pay attention to your job, be here, but that's a really hard piece for people to be present. And so how do we teach that? And so two individuals have done research and they've done some research and studying on mindfulness and then there's a practitioner and they've been marrying these things together successfully and teaching people like really how to get present when they get to work so they can
00:26:04
Speaker
shed some of those things possibly from home that might be a distraction or from work and the pace of work so that the task at hand can be focused on. It's really powerful. Right? I think it's just really interesting research that's just
00:26:20
Speaker
There's a lot of cognition, and I'll just use that generally to say how a human being is able to be either present, like you said, for the task at hand, or whether or not they're being impaired in their ability to be present, and how do we not only get them to the right state, maybe through mindfulness techniques, or know that they're not, and make sure that we're taking the right actions. I think this issue of cognition
00:26:46
Speaker
and the human being in a workplace is going to continue to be something we focus on especially as we bring technology into the workplace and we start to have automation and other things that are doing some of the more manual activities and that human being and their mind and how they're interacting
00:27:04
Speaker
in that environment with a lot of technology is going to be so critical for us to navigate and navigate well. And the things that we used to call a soft skill is really a hard skill. Exactly. Well, you know, one of the things that you said yesterday when I was listening to you on stage, I believe you were repeating leave no one behind. Yes. Right. And so that's kind of where we're that's where we're at right now. What does that look like for you? Maybe for
00:27:31
Speaker
The next Congress, 2020, when you have more time to be thinking about educational equity and collaboration and not leaving people behind as you continue to plan. It's going to take all of us, the accidental safety professionals. Yeah, what can we do? Yeah, you've got an audience of safety professionals. What would be your ask of us? I gave a little bit of that call yesterday, and I think it is to show up where the work is done.
00:27:59
Speaker
and go to where we're asking employees to do things, whether it's construction sites or whether it's their office work environment.
00:28:06
Speaker
or in my case, getting inside the wings of a C5 to try to address the fasteners in there. Go as a safety professional, ensure that you're in the workplace and seeing what human beings are struggling with or what they're putting themselves into potential, hazardous situations, and ask yourself, how can I change this situation and what can I do to partner with them to resolve it? I say that not only to our safety professionals, but I say it to all leaders in all organizations. This is your job and this is how
00:28:35
Speaker
You asked me at the outset, you know, I became an accidental safety professional. And it is because when I was a leader in a big organization, helping organizations build complex systems, I made it my job to show up to the workplace and see what people were struggling with. And sometimes it's struggling to get the job done on time and on schedule, and sometimes they're struggling because there's hazards in their way.
00:28:59
Speaker
And if you don't go and ask the question to the people doing the work, what's in your way? What's hard right now? You can come up with very simple questions that are open-ended, and you're going to get a flood of information. Exactly. Show me how you do your work. And then do something about it. Right. Right. Yes. Which is sometimes we ask and then don't follow through, and then nobody's going to tell you anymore. Right. All credibility is lost. You've got to have your ears open, and then you have to take action.
00:29:27
Speaker
We need to go and we need to be a call to arms to show up, be a leader, ask the employees what they most need and make sure we're providing it.
Conclusion and Call to Action
00:29:38
Speaker
Lorraine, thank you. Thank you. That's wonderful. Appreciate it. Appreciate your time. Good luck with your position. Thank you. I think this is a great Congress. You're getting a great start. Thank you so much. Appreciate it too. Yeah, you're welcome.
00:29:52
Speaker
And thank you all for spending your time listening today, and more importantly, thank you for your contribution, making sure your workers, including your temporary workers, make it home safe every day. If you'd like to join the conversation about this episode or any of our episodes, follow our page and join the Accidental Safety Pro Community Group on Facebook.
00:30:11
Speaker
If you aren't subscribed and want to hear past or future episodes, subscribe in iTunes, the Apple Podcast app, or any podcast player that you'd like. You can also find all of the episodes at vividlearningsystems.com slash podcast. We'd love it if you could leave us a rating and review us on iTunes. If you have a suggestion for a guest, including if it's yourself, please contact me at social at vividlearningsystems.com. Until next time, thanks for listening.