In 2013, I retired from 3M Company as Corporate Occupational Health Manager in the 3M Medical Department. In that capacity I worked toward achieving a safe and healthy workplace by designing prevention programs and assuring that the occupational health nurses at 3M had the skills needed to deliver quality programs and services. My responsibilities fell into 3 categories:

1. Training and development planning for the approximately 100 global occupational health nurses (OHNs). Three examples are overseeing an orientation program, leading development of online training modules for an electronic medical record system, and developing career paths.

2. Program development addressing both work related and non-work related injury/illness and disease prevention and management.

3. Field support and consultation with occupational health nurses and management. Examples of issues I addressed included questions on occupational health concerns such as health policy interpretation, return to work issues, and assistance with hiring nurses.

Working with the OHNs on development and coaching them to improve their skills in a business setting and to be successful in their careers was meaningful, as well as program development, because of the opportunity to influence the health of the population that includes employees and their families.

For three years following my retirement from 3M, I taught the core class for MCOHS trainees, Introduction to Occupational Health and Safety, and I have served on the Advisory Board for the overall MCOHS ERC. Working with graduate students from the varied occupational health and safety disciplines was gratifying in being able to share my experiences from working at three corporate headquarters (Honeywell Inc. and Northwest Airlines, in addition to 3M), and also learning from the students about their practice issues and concerns.

In 2015 I joined the Board of Directors of Vista Prairie Communities (VPC), a Minneapolis non-profit senior housing organization with eight assisted living and memory care facilities primarily in Minnesota and Iowa. The VPC Board of Directors recognized the need to add a nurse to their Board as they expressed interest in providing more health and wellness services for their employees. As the Board’s Director of Wellness, I have partnered with faculty in the School of Public Health on an MCOHS Pilot Project grant to assess and improve employee health (cardiometabolic risks including hypertension, BMI and waist circumference, physical activity, diet) as well as job satisfaction and workplace support. The pilot project has provided a base for us to continue our focus on health improvement for these employees who provide caregiving services to the elderly in primarily rural areas and who are often a neglected population for health and safety programs.

Dr. Finder’s educational background includes a BS in Industrial Education and a MS in Safety from UW-Stout, a Doctorate of Industrial Technology from the University of Northern Iowa, and accreditation as a Certified Industrial Hygienist by the American Board of Industrial Hygiene. In 2003, Brian was recognized by the College of Technology, Engineering and Management for his teaching excellence and received UW-Stout’s Outstanding Graduate Faculty Award in August of 2010. In addition to researching the attenuation qualities of anti-vibration gloves, an experimental study of his identified that long-term/repeated cold exposure produces a semi-permanent form of peripheral nervous system impairment in meat processing workers. The results of this study were presented in March of 2006 at the 9th Annual Applied Ergonomics Conference in Orlando, Florida.

Having served as the Program Director for the M.S. Risk Control program, Brian presently teaches various courses within the Operations and Management Department, including Human Factors Engineering/Ergonomics, Fleet Risk Control Management, Principles of Occupational Risk Control / Safety and Field Problems in Risk Control. He also teaches a series of five courses which allows individuals to become certified by the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction and/or the Department of Transportation in order to teach traffic safety education.

Prior to joining the Risk Control Center faculty in January of 1995, Brian spent ten years as a safety and industrial hygiene technical support professional for high-tech, heavy/light manufacturing, agricultural, and food processing-related industries. He routinely provides industrial hygiene as well as safety-based consultation for various types of manufacturing and service-based organizations.

Dr. Susan Hallbeck, PE, CPE is the Robert D. and Patricia E. Kern Scientific Director of Health Care Systems Engineering in the Kern Center for the Science of Healthcare Delivery and faculty in Health Care Policy and Research, as well as Surgery at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN. She is a Professor and section head of Health Care Systems Engineering in the Mayo Medical School.

She is an emerita Professor in Industrial Engineering / Mechanical and Materials Engineering at the University of Nebraska Lincoln with a courtesy appointment in Surgery at the University of Nebraska Medical Center. While at the University of Nebraska, she served on the NIOSH Heartland Occupational Safety and Health Center (University of Iowa) Board of Advisors from their formation in 1999 until she moved to Mayo Clinic in 2012.

Susan earned her PhD from Virginia Tech, her MS from Texas Tech on a NIOSH traineeship and her BS from Iowa State University, all in Industrial Engineering.

She served as engineering lead for the VA Engineering Resource Center at the Nebraska-Western Iowa Veterans Health Administration Medical Center. She performed research at the Swedish National Institute for Working Life and The Netherlands Organization for Applied Scientific Research in the Quality of Worklife, Ergonomics and Innovation Department.

She is on the editorial board of Applied Ergonomics and an associate editor of and IIE Transactions on Healthcare Systems Engineering. She has over 90 archival peer-reviewed publications. She was elected Fellow in the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society Fall 2014.

Susan’s research focus is to improve medical device ergonomics, teamwork and health care ergonomics for provider and patient safety. She is a certified professional ergonomist and professional engineer in industrial engineering with a specialty in human factors and ergonomics. Her work is currently focused in the operating room and emergency department.

Dr. Nico Pronk is President of the HealthPartners Institute and Chief Science Officer at HealthPartners, Inc. and holds a faculty appointment as Adjunct Professor of Social and Behavioral Sciences at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in Boston, Massachusetts.

Dr. Pronk’s work is focused on connecting evidence of effectiveness with practical applications of programs and practices, policies and systems that measurably improve population health and well-being. His work applies to the workplace, the health system setting, and the community and involves development of new models to improve health and well-being at the research, practice and policy levels.

Dr. Pronk was confirmed by the White House to serve as co-chair of the U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services’ Advisory Committee on National Health Promotion and Disease Prevention Objectives for the year 2030 (aka “Healthy People 2030”). He is a current member of the Food and Nutrition Board and incoming Chair for the Roundtable on Obesity Solutions at the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine. He is the founding and past president of the International Association for Worksite Health Promotion.
He is widely published in both the scientific and practice literatures and is an international speaker on population health and well-being. Dr. Pronk received his doctorate degree in exercise physiology at Texas A&M University and completed his post-doctoral studies in behavioral medicine at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center at the Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

HealthPartners Institute is one of the largest medical research and education centers in the Midwest, the Institute has about 450 studies underway each year, trains more than 500 medical residents and fellows and more than 500 students, and provides continuing medical education for 25,000 clinicians as well as patient education and clinical quality improvement. HealthPartners, founded in 1957 as a cooperative, is an integrated, non-profit, member-governed health system providing health care services and health plan financing and administration. It’s the largest consumer governed nonprofit health care organization in the United States.

For 30 years, Vikki Sanders has worked at the Department of Labor and industry as the Workplace Violence Prevention consultant for the state of Minnesota. She has worked 7 years as an OSHA investigator and 23 years as a Principal Consultant specializing in Workplace Violence, general industry safety and safety committees.

Vikki currently is the Public Sector Principal Safety Consultant for the Department of Labor and Industry specializing with public sector employers. Vikki has taught over 610 businesses and 55,000 employees on safety topics in a variety of industrial settings including healthcare, education, manufacturing, government and business.

As a Consultant/Trainer and Co-Author of the workplace violence prevention manual, Vikki Sanders offers practical tools of awareness and understanding that help make workplaces safer.

Alisha Volante leads Research and Internal Communications at Service Industry Employee Union local 26 (SEIU L26), representing 8,000 service industry workers including, janitors, security guards, and airport workers. At SEIU L26, Volante conducts industry and corporate research for members, facilitates member education trainings, writes curricula, organizes college and university outreach, and manages internal communications.

Volante conducted her graduate work at the University of Minnesota College of Liberal Arts; her studies include American history, Minnesota history, public history, and U.S. race relations. Her personal research examines the Minneapolis Urban Crisis, specifically education, housing, and employment discrimination from 1945 to 1975. Volante often uses her research to create lectures and workshops for community organizations, and other educational settings connecting Minnesota’s history with its present. Community-based research projects further allow Volante to use her investigative skills for a common good; her community research projects include; American Indian incarceration in Minnesota, Organizing the local chapter of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters 1920s – 1960s, and the effects of Alzheimer’s in Minnesota’s Black and Latinx communities.

In 2017, Alisha found the world of labor research and took her love for community-based research to a new level. Her work with Minnesotans for a Fair Economy connected her to local worker and tenant organizations working towards a $15 minimum wage and the right to live in healthy apartment buildings. The need for researchers working on behalf of the working class became clear, and Volante quickly seized upon the opportunity to work for one of the most culturally diverse and activist unions in the nation, SEIU L26.

Volante has consulted with Twin Cities Public Television, The Minnesota Historical Society, Minneapolis Public Schools, Hiawatha Learning Academy, and Minnesota Humanities Center, among others.