Ms. Ayers has served on the Waconia City Council since 2013. She is also a Managing Partner of the Diamond A Farm LLC. The Diamond A Farm is a 1,200-acre Century farm located in St. Cloud, Minnesota, which was established by her great grandfather in 1878. Over the years Lynn has provided direct labor, driving tractor/hauling grain, irrigation, to recent (2014) new responsibilitities of operating the farm along with contract and fiscal management. Diamond A Farm has received statewide recognition for its Conservation Reserve Program (CRP). Ms. Ayers has been a featured farmer in the University of Minnesota’s School of Public Health Advances Publication, focus on sustainability and environment.

As the former director of Ridgeview Business Health for 24 years, Ms. Ayers provided overall administration of an occupational health program and the clinical services provided to businesses and industries in the southwestern Twin Cities area. That included strategic planning, marketing, implementation, evaluation, financial management and supervision of staff that provided services to over 500 companies.

Ms. Ayers was also involved in a variety of other activities such as the Department of Labor and Industry-Medical Services Review Board, Carver County Safety and Emergency Preparedness Committee, and the Southwest Metro Chamber of Commerce Board of Directors. She is the past president of the Chanhassen Chamber and Chaska Area Chamber, and has served as President of Chaska Rotary She is member of the University of Minnesota’s Occupational Health Nursing Advisory Board and Midwest Center for Occupational Health and Safety advisory Board. She works on global public health issues and has served as a member of an international Rotary team in India for WHO/Polio Plus, Peru-scholarship program, and Brazil-Professional Exchange Program. In 2013, she led a team of young professionals for a month exchange in central India, Madya Pradesh.

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.

James Kelly, M.S. has over 25 years of experience with the State of Minnesota in the environmental health field, at both the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency and the Minnesota Department of Health (MDH). He is currently the manager of the Environmental Surveillance and Assessment Section at MDH, which: develops, maintains, and applies expert risk assessment techniques so that environmental hazards are assessed using sound science; conducts public health activities related to contaminant releases; and tracks the occurrence and characteristics of environmental health issues such as climate change.

Ms. Nan N. Pham is an entrepreneur and community organizer with over 15 years of experience in the beauty industry and has served as a Board Member for the Massachusetts Board of Cosmetology and Barbering. She actively works towards safer practices in beauty salons to ensure health protection for salon workers. She’s also a current member of the MA Healthy Cosmetology Committee and the Vietnamese Health Collaborative. Ms. Pham is currently working with the City of Minneapolis on the Healthy Nail Salon Initiative to promote healthier and safer working environment for nail salon workers. She has worked on many research projects for the prevention of hazardous chemical exposures and health issues. She was on the Board of Director for the Stoughton Chamber of Commerce and the Vietnamese-American Chamber of Commerce.

John has worked with many unions in Minnesota on a diversity of projects, including the Building Trades, Wage Theft Coalition, the MN Department of Labor and Industry, Construct Tomorrow, and the Fair Contracting Foundation. He was an advisor to the Capitol Area Architectural and Planning Board (CAAPB) on the building of the Workers’ Memorial Garden in St. Paul.

John started producing television programs in 1982 while an undergraduate at the U of MN as a director, writer, editor, and on-air talent. With these skills he began his work at LES in 1984 by cofounding “Minnesota At Work” which became the longest-running, regularly scheduled cable television in the U.S. about labor and working people, and which ended in 2009 when programming migrated to the web.

He was one of the founders of the Union Producers and Programmers Network (UPPNET). For 30 years he’s been teaching video production classes and produced many video projects for LES. He served on the board of the Minneapolis Television Network (MTN) 1989-1996, eventually as board chair, and was instrumental in promoting MTN’s non-profit internet service to unions around the state. In 1993, John began teaching classes in website creation, internet skills including social media, and is responsible for dozens of local unions’ websites.

In 2000 he became the webmaster for WorkdayMinnesota.org. He has been active as a representative on two University governance committees. He is a long-time member and Trustee of IATSE Local 219, an associate member of the Minnesota Newspaper Guild and Typographical Union, and a past member of Teamsters Local 4.

Marco Yzer is Professor of Health Communication at the University of Minnesota’s School of Journalism & Mass Communication (SJMC). He also has an adjunct professor appointment at the University of Minnesota’s School of Public Health.

Yzer holds a PhD in Social Psychology from the University of Groningen, the Netherlands (1999). He was a postdoctoral fellow at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania (2000-2001), and Assistant Professor at the University of Amsterdam (2002-2005). His research focuses on motivational processes that explain how mass-mediated and interpersonal communication may lead or inhibit health behavior, and on how understanding of these processes can inform the design of messages that can help people improve their health.

He has consulted on the design and evaluation of numerous health promotion interventions in the U.S., the Netherlands, Mexico, and South Africa on safe sex, alcohol use, drug use, cancer screening, vaccination and smoking cessation, among others. His work has been published in communication, public health and psychology academic journals.

At the University of Minnesota Yzer is the Director of Graduate Studies of the SJMC’s Health Communication MA program. He advises MA students in that program as well as MA and PhD students in the SJMC’s academic graduate programs whose research focuses on health communication.