Horst Rakel is the EHS director for Pentair plc in EMEA and Asia-Pacific regions, which in­cludes some 30 manufacturing locations and 30 distribution and service centres. Horst has over 20 years’ experience in EHSQ leadership positions with large multinational corporations in the electronics and engineering business. Originally trained as a quality technician in the food industry, he holds an undergraduate degree in environmental engineering from TH Bingen, Germany, a master’s degree in risk management from Clark University, MA, USA, and a PhD in environmental science from the University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK. Horst is a certified safety professional, a certified quality manager, a trained Digital Six Sigma (DSS) Black Belt, and a Lean Associate. Horst has held several honorary appointments, including chairman of the Subcommittee on Risk Communication, German Federal Commission on Plant Safety (KAS), and has published several peer-reviewed papers and book chapters.

Andrea is an accomplished senior environmental health & safety leader. His professional achievements are supported by a strong scientific and technical background. With General Electric (Alstom until its acquisition in 2015), he is based at the Baden headquarters in Switzerland as the senior regional operations manager. He is the EHS pole leader for gas projects Europe & Africa, in charge of developing and implementing the overall EHS strat­egy. Andrea promotes EHS at 360°, liaising with customers’ senior management during the sales phase, delivering training from executive management to project site engineers, and being a keynote speaker at international EHS events and conferences. He is a certified lead and senior auditor for several management systems and a senior trainer for behavioural safety, leadership programs, and accident investigation courses. He leads the development of trainers and deployment of EHS courses accredited by IOSH and the accident investi­gation training. As a solid foundation to many advanced professional certificates, Andrea holds a bachelor’s degree in forestry and environmental sciences and a master’s degree in environment and risk analysis.

Tony Verbraeken is the vice president of human resources for Upstream operated coun­tries, production excellence & safety at Shell. He joined Shell in 1992 where he has since worked in several HR roles including the Downstream, Gas & Power, and Upstream busi­nesses. His last five roles at Shell were global. He studied in Europe and the US and was based at Shell in Asia, Africa, Latin America, and Europe. Tony plays an active role in safety leadership both at the operations level and at a more strategic level. When it comes to safety he is involved in areas spanning from behavioural change and competency develop­ment to HR management of HSSE professionals.

Sandra Guerreiro is the quality assurance head and corporate business continuity manage­ment coordinator at Novartis Portugal. She also worked in different quality roles at Novartis regionally and globally. Before she joined Novartis, she worked in other marketing phar­maceutical industries and manufacturing sites, quality assurance, and customer service in which she was involved in all areas and departments. Being passionate about quality and continuous improvement, she has positively influenced the organizations and contributed to a sustainable growth of the business, through quality and compliance. Designing and implementing a best in class quality management system and boosting the continuous improvement culture in the companies she worked for, are some of the achievements she is most proud of. Sandra is a pharmacist and has concluded several post-graduate studies in marketing and management.

Helena has over 23 years of experience from working with safety, health & environmental questions in the pharmaceutical industry. She started her career in AstraZeneca as a man­ager for the environmental laboratory in Södertälje, after several years in different roles in the SHE area. Between 2008 and 2012, she focused on the environmental questions from manufacturing to customer product demands. Since 2012 Helena has the responsibility for safety, health & environment for the AZ production site in Södertälje, Sweden.

Solen Karavelioglu is the group head of health, safety, environment and quality at Linde. She has been with Linde since May 2015. In her current role, Solen is responsible for leading Linde to achieve a world-class safety performance underpinned by a strong safety culture at a global level. The Linde Group builds and operates plants across 100 countries globally, produces gases and liquids for various industries, and transports them to customers through various means. Prior to that, she worked in the oil and gas industry and has 21 years of international experience in upstream and midstream roles. Before joining Linde, Solen was with BP for 17 years in various engineering, management, and senior leadership roles. Prior to that, she was a wireline field engineer at Schlumberger following her Bachelor of Science in petroleum engineering at the Middle East Technical University, Ankara in 1994.

Born & schooled in his hometown of Derby, Steve started his career in 1979 as an ap­prentice with British Rail Engineering Limited before embarking on a career as an HSE practitioner in the water industry. Later he joined the Engineering Employers Federation West Midlands as a senior tutor consultant before teaming up with Colin Rider to form Mes­sam & Rider Limited. In September 2009, he joined BAE Systems Surface Ships heading up their safety, health & environmental function across the maritime business working on programmes such as T23, T45, QEC Carrier and T26. In November 2014, Steve returned to his hometown of Derby to take up his current global head of HS&E HSE Rolls-Royce where he is responsible for the development and deployment of the HS&E strategy ensuring com­pliance with group HS&E policy, a high-performance culture, and resilient organisational capability. Throughout his professional career, Steve has a proven track record of creating teams of change agents enabling the design and delivery of practical solutions.

Hanna Uusitalo joined KONE in 2008. As the environmental director of the company, she is responsible for developing both the short and long-term environmental strategies for KONE’s solutions, services and operations. She also drives the company’s environmental excellence strategy. An important milestone in KONE’s journey toward environmental ex­cellence is up to 90% reduction in the energy consumption of new elevators since 1990’s. Hanna is also a member of the board of World Alliance, Low Carbon City, Smart & Clean foundation, as well as KONE’s liaison delegate for the World Business Council for Sus­tainable Development. Hanna Uusitalo has a degree in environmental engineering from the United States Military Academy in West Point, NY and she has a master’s degree in environmental science and technology from the University of Jyväskylä in Finland. Prior to her career in KONE, she had a 12-year long career in the Ministry of Defence of Finland as the senior advisor in the area of defence environmental strategies and development of environmental considerations during peace and in crisis management operations.

Thierry joined the Arkema Group in July 2011 through the acquisition of the Resins business of Total and he moved to the Direction Safety Environment Group in May 2012, after more than 25 years spent in the field from plant manager to managing director through to indus­trial director in different countries (UK, Germany, France). He was mainly in the chemical industry but as well in the steel, stainless, and aluminium industry. In that case most of the time in France and in Asia. Thierry has a proven track record in project management from the design phase to the commissioning phase with a specific emphasis on safety, health and environment issues. In industrial safety, his experience is based on 3 axes: technical, organization, and behavioural approaches. He is an internal AIMS (Arkema Integrated Man­agement System) auditor and a SafeStart © trainer. Thierry has deployed such programmes over the last couple of years, being involved in the Safety Culture module development and deployment. In December 2016, he moved to the Adhesives business of Arkema and became the global HSE director for the Bostik Group.

Ian is the director of sustainability for Taylor Wimpey UK Ltd, one of the UK’s largest house builders. He is responsible for the development and delivery of Taylor Wimpey’s sustain­ability strategy. This has included work on climate change, resources, social issues, report­ing, disclosure, contaminated land, and environmental liability. He recently completed a materiality review and is currently working on a new strategy. Ian’s career started at Imperial College and with environmental consultancy practices ERM and RPS. For the last twenty years, he has been working within the construction sector, initially on large civil engineering projects, but predominantly within the house building sector.

Per Renman has a background in the construction industry where he worked on large com­plex infrastructure projects across the world for 30 years, in which many of these projects included underground work. He spent his first 15 years in production and then in various positions related to EHS, which include BU global EHS manager. He has a degree in civil engineering. He has been the group safety director for the Boliden Group since 2014 with a special assignment in improving their safety culture.

Bob is a senior and experienced occupational physician who is also a qualified health & safety practitioner. He has worked at the corporate level in a range of companies and also worked at a senior level for an external occupational health provider, Health Management, a MAXIMUS Company in the UK. He was the medical lead for Europe in IBM, advising on occupational health provision throughout Europe. Before joining IBM, he was a senior lec­turer in environmental medicine and the deputy director of the Medical Toxicology Centre at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne and within that role advised the Health Protec­tion Agency (now Public Health England), UK MoD and NATO on chemical and radiation incidents within the CBRN arena. He has extensive experience with occupational medicine in a number of industries including engineering, rail, and aerospace. He is also an expert in environmental medicine, toxicology, radiation incidents, and emergency planning. Until re­cently, he was the chair of the UK Faculty of Occupational Medicine’s Ethics Committee and sat on the Royal College of Physicians Committee of Ethics in Medicine. He has published several scientific papers, while also contributing to and editing several textbooks. Bob was previously the head of occupational health for Rolls Royce plc with global responsibility for civil airlines and nuclear segments of the business. He was the director of occupational safety and health for the Isle of Man Government after successfully setting up a consultant lead occupational health and safety service. Bob earned a degree in genetics before study­ing medicine. He has also lived and worked in Japan as a research fellow at the Radiation Effects Research Foundation in both Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Martijn is the founder and chief commercial officer of XVR Simulation. His work as a vol­unteer for the Dutch Red Cross formed the basis for his interest in education and training emergency services professionals. The foundation of XVR Simulation was driven by an idea: simulation could help incident responders improve at dealing with emergencies and, as a result, be more efficient at saving lives. Martijn’s tireless efforts to prove the merits of virtual reality training to emergency services have shown that now, almost 17 years later, simulation training has grown into a globally acknowledged part of the training curriculum. Martijn is proud and excited to see how leading companies from around the world have embraced the concept of virtual reality training. His work is not done, however, as there are still tremendous opportunities to expand and improve the application of virtual reality training and Martijn is raring to go and seize these opportunities.

Madelon Jansen is DriveTech’s sales development manager since 2014. She has over 24 years experience in fleet business development, sales, and account management. She has held senior commercial positions within LeasePlan International and Terberg Leasing, both in the Nether­lands and overseas. She holds a master’s degree in international law, is specialised in interna­tional business management and fluent in all aspects of fleet risk and driver safety management.