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SPS Personnel

Safety Performance Solutions is led by E. Scott Geller, Ph.D., Professor of Psychology at Virginia Tech.
Other team members include professionals from the field of industrial/organizational psychology, industrial engineering, human factors engineering/ergonomics, organizational design and development, occupational safety and health, communications, and education/training. SPS team members have significant experience in the design delivery, and implementation of safety improvement initiatives using person-based and behavior- based psychology.

These efforts include conducting site safety assessments, educating site managers and line employees, designing customized training and implementation processes, and helping establish performance measures for the new/desired safety culture. SPS team members travel extensively to address professional organizations, senior management teams, union leadership, and hourly work teams.

Safety Performance Solutions' key team members are:

Scott Geller

In addition to being a founding partner and co-owner of Safety Performance Solutions, Dr. E. Scott Geller is a faculty member of Virginia Tech's Department of Psychology where he has taught and conducted applied/experimental research for more than three decades. In this capacity, he has authored more than 300 research articles and over 50 books or chapters addressing the development and evaluation of behavior-change interventions to improve quality of life. He recently published his eighth book on managing behaviors and attitudes for occupational health and safety titled "People-Based Safety: the Source" (2005, Coastal).

Dr. Geller has been honored with all three university-wide teaching awards at Virginia Tech, and is a widely sought-after speaker at safety and industrial conferences, such as ASSE, NSC, and VPPPA. He has addressed audiences throughout the world including Africa, Asia, Australia. He also frequently keynotes at corporate-sponsored events. Recent examples include presentations for American Electric Power, ExxonMobil Chemicals, Infineum, and Monsanto. He is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association, the American Psychological Society, and the World Academy of Productivity and Quality.

Anne French

Anne French Anne has spent over 30 years in education and training including the past 15 years where she has specialized in organizational design and development and the psychology of safety. Before forming Safety Performance Solutions, she spent eight years at Virginia Tech's Management Systems Labs and the Center for Organizational Performance Improvement; both of Virginia Tech’s Industrial and Systems Engineering Department whose missions are to help organizations continually improve all aspects of their performance. At Virginia Tech, Dr. French managed projects related to organizational effectiveness, culture change, strategic planning, team building, and quality management in addition to her work in behavioral safety. Anne holds a Ph.D. in applied statistics from the University of Virginia.

Dr. French has managed single-site and multi-site projects in behavioral-based safety management processes for a wide variety of industries. Some of Anne's multi-site projects include Honeywell, Square D, Cargill Grain, Advanced Elastomer Systems, and 3M Company. A sample of single-site projects includes Valero Energy, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Depuy (Johnson & Johnson), Ecolab, and Nabors Well Services. Typical speaking engagements include a variety of corporate and professional society conferences (e.g., NASA, Duke Power, American Trucking Association Management Conference), and national and regional safety conferences (ASSE, VPPPA, Virginia OSHA Safety Conferences, Frito Lay Annual Safety Conference, and Behavioral Safety NOW).

Anne is a professional member of the American Society of Safety Engineers and a member of the National Safety Council. Her favorite past time is golf.

Anne is a member of the National Safety Council and the American Society of Safety Engineers.

Mike Gilmore

Mike Gilmore Mike is a founding member and senior partner with Safety Performance Solutions, and has extensive experience implementing behavior-based and people-based safety processes in a wide variety of industry and community settings. Mike’s work has focused on the application of psychology to increasing employee engagement in safety, developing personal responsibility, and improving the organization’s overall safety management systems. Mike has worked with clients in the U.S. and abroad including ExxonMobil Chemical, Alcan, Hewlett-Packard, LL Bean, Union Pacific Railroad, Nucor Steel, Pfizer, Monsanto, Duracell and Los Alamos National Labs. Mike has given keynotes, invited addresses, and workshops at a variety of regional and national conferences throughout North America.

Miguel Jover

Miguel Jover For 13 years, Miguel worked as an engineer and regional manager for a utility power company where he started to implement safety systems. For seven years afterwards, Miguel was the Brazilian Quality coordinator and consultant for Westinghouse where he implemented Quality systems. During this time, Miguel was able to clearly understand the importance of management systems and their critical relevance to improved safety. This experience was fundamental for his 12 years as a Principal Consultant in the area of safety for Det Norske Veritas (DNV). During this time he was able to work with numerous industries including mining, oil, pharmaceutical, general industries, utilities, and automotive.

Among other positions, Miguel served as the Latin America manager for DNV. This experience and his fluency in four languages (Portuguese, Spanish, French and English), has given Miguel critical insights into a wide variety of cultures and behaviors around the world.

Miguel has a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from Mackenzie University, and has completed Safety postgraduate work at the Armando Alvares Penteado Foundation in Brazil.

Tim Ludwig

Tim earned his Ph.D. at Virginia Tech and has over 15 years safety consulting and research experience. In addition to being a project manager with SPS, Dr. Ludwig is a full professor at Appalachian State University. Tim also has over 10 years of strategic planning and human resources development expertise to numerous private and government organizations. Clients include the US Navy-Naval Sea Systems Command (NAVSEA), US Department of Energy, National Grocers of Canada, the Deaconess Hospital System, Boyles Furniture, and Alex Lee Inc. of North Carolina.

Dr. Ludwig serves on the Cambridge Center for Behavioral Studies’ Behavioral Safety Accreditation Board that reviews best-in-industry safety practices and offers independent, objective feedback on safety programs. With Safety Performance Solutions, Tim has promoted safety programs at Eastman Chemicals, Domino’s Pizza, and Watauga Medical Centers.

At Appalachian State University, he is a University Deans Distinguished Graduate Faculty in the nationally recognized Industrial/Organizational Psychology-Human Resources Management Masters program. Tim's teaching has been recognized with the North Carolina University Board of Governors’ Excellence in Teaching award and he has been inducted into Appalachian State University's Academy of Outstanding Teachers.

Dr. Ludwig is currently serving as the President of the Organizational Behavior Management Network and is an associate editor of the Journal of Organizational Behavior Management . He is the author of the book Intervening to Improve the Safety of Occupational Driving and has written numerous articles on safety in the workplace.

Molly McClintock

Molly earned a B.S. in Communication from Cornell University in Ithaca, NY. She was one of the original cofounders and Senior Partners of Safety Performance Solutions.

Before retiring to become a part-time External Associate, Molly managed multiple culture change projects with an emphasis on organizational safety and employee empowerment. She assessed organizational safety culture, communicated findings, and recommended culture change initiatives. She regularly designed, developed, and delivered education and training programs for varied audiences from senior corporate managers to hourly employees. Training topics included: observation and coaching skills, teambuilding, and behavior-based incident investigation.

Molly consulted with managers, safety professionals, union officials, and employee leaders to assess and advance observation and feedback processes and other safety improvement efforts. For large-scale implementation efforts, Molly coached and evaluated in-house trainers. She also delivered presentations for professional conferences and corporate meetings.

She worked with a diverse range of organizations including Lockheed, Florida Power & Light, Hercules, American Standard, and the U.S. Department of Energy. As a research faculty member of Virginia Tech's Center for Organizational Performance Improvement, Molly managed the development and delivery of training workshops and professional meetings for government and industry. She conducted training on behavior-based safety, teambuilding, mentoring, and communication. Additionally, she gained experience in the evaluation of technical and non-technical training.

Sherry Perdue

Sherry Perdue Dr. Perdue earned her Ph.D. and M.S. from Virginia Tech in industrial and systems engineering with a concentration in human factors engineering and ergonomics. In addition to her nearly 10 years of experience in behavioral safety, she also leads other safety-related projects such as the modification of work environments to reduce CTDs, the redesign of incident investigation procedures to better uncover the root causes of human performance issues, and the design of behavior-based incentive programs. Before forming SPS, she served as a project manager, instructor, and researcher for Virginia Tech's Department of Industrial Engineering, and worked as an industrial engineer at a large ammunitions manufacturing facility operated by Hercules, Inc.

Some of Sherry's clients include, Estee Lauder, ExxonMobil Chemical, Lucent Technologies, Toyota Motor Manufacturing, General Dynamics, and Weyerheauser. Sherry is a frequent speaker at national safety conferences including ASSE, Behavioral Safety NOW, and VPPPA. Other speaking engagements have included keynote addresses at professional society meetings (e.g., WV Safety Council) and corporate safety conferences (e.g., ARCO Chemical, Kohler, Masco) as well as public seminars in Australia and Singapore.

Steve Roberts

Steve Roberts Steve earned a M.S. in Industrial/Organizational Psychology from West Chester University and a M.A. and Ph.D. in Applied/Experimental Psychology with a focus in Organizational Behavior Management from Virginia Tech.

His specific areas of expertise include the design, implementation, and evaluation of behavior-based safety processes, the assessment of organizational culture to guide safety interventions, increasing employee involvement in safety activities, organizational management systems design, organizational leadership development, and understanding and reducing human error in the workplace.

Before helping to form Safety Performance Solutions, he was a research associate with Management Systems Laboratories (MSL) of the Industrial and Systems Engineering Department of Virginia Tech and safety consultant with Make-A-Difference, Inc. He has taught Research Methods at Virginia Tech, and for five years served as a Project Manager at the Center for Applied Behavior Systems (CABS) of the Psychology Department at Virginia Tech, where he participated in and helped direct graduate and undergraduate research projects which combine the technology of applied behavior analysis with theories from industrial, experimental, and personality psychology to solve real-world problems and improve people's quality of life.

Steve has published articles in a number of peer reviewed academic journals including American Journal of Health Promotion, Applied and Preventive Psychology, Journal of Organizational Behavior Management, and Journal of Safety Research, as well as Safety + Health, Security Management, and People, Land and Water Magazines. Steve is a regular speaker at both public and corporate sponsored safety events. Some of Steve’s recent consulting clients include Caterpillar, ExxonMobil, Land ‘O Lakes, The National Park Service, East Jordan Iron Works, BHP Billiton, Westvaco Chemical, Pfizer, Morflex, Kraft Foods, and Freudenberg Textiles. Steve is a member of the National Safety Council and the American Society of Safety Engineers.

Bob Veazie

Bob Veazie Bob earned a BS in Finance from Cal Poly SLO and an MBA from Long Beach State. He spent 2 years each with Shell and Fluor before joining Hewlett-Packard. At HP, Bob spent time in accounting and production management, an internal safety consultant (including acting as HP’s internal behavior-based safety consultant), an internal quality systems consultant (e.g., ISO 9000), culminating his 24 year HP career as a marketing change agent. Following his retirement from HP, Bob worked as a safety management consultant for the State of Oregon and as quality manager at Nypro.

While at HP, Bob worked directly for the IJBU exec team for developing the behavior-based safety process for the business unit of 15,000 employees, introduced behavior-based safety at several sites around the world, and oversaw creating of HP’s internal implementation guide / manual for behavior-based safety. Not coincidentally, HP’s recordable injury rate declined by one-third during this period.

Bob has studied Organizational Development since 1992 reading hundreds of books on the topic, attending numerous conferences with key thought leaders Peter Senge, Meg Wheatley, David Whyte, Juanita Brown, Peter Block, Tom Peters and others. This background further enables Bob to apply key principles of effective organizational change to safety and management process development.

Starting with his work with quality systems, Bob began to see the parallels between behavior-based safety, quality and management processes. Working for the State of Oregon and Nypro allowed him the opportunity to see the direct intersection of safety and quality systems. It was then Bob realized he could make a bigger impact in the consulting world.

Bob has been a keynote speaker at numerous conferences and conveys his message with passion and energy, focusing on the direct application of concepts and principles using simple, easy to understand examples helping create value for the organization. Bob has also published safety articles in Professional Safety and ISHN.

Josh H. Williams

Josh H. Williams Josh earned his Ph.D. in Industrial/Organizational Psychology from Virginia Tech. He received his Bachelor's degree from Kalamazoo College and the American Institute in Spain. In addition to his work in behavior-based safety, Josh's other interests include personality testing, leadership, and organizational culture change.

Since joining Safety Performance Solutions in 1997, Josh has worked with clients from a variety of industries including Borden Chemical, Monsanto, Chevron, ExxonMobil Chemical, and Lucent Technologies. In addition to these domestic projects, Josh has managed projects using his fluent Spanish with Eli Lily Pharmaceutical, Searle, and Pfizer in Puerto Rico.

He has numerous publications in refereed journals including Professional Safety, Behavior Analysis Digest, and Occupational Safety and Health. Josh is a member of the Society of Industrial/Organizational Psychology, American Psychological Association, Association of Behavior Analysis, and American Society for Safety Engineers.