EHS Field Notes: Lead with Empathy, Manage with Pragmatism
Welcome to EHS Field Notes – a collection of best practices, ideas, and open discussion from the EHS profession.
While finishing a B.S. in Public Health with a concentration in Environmental, Occupational Health and Safety. I took a job as an EHS intern for a local manufacturer where I discovered the two things that have shaped my work ever since:
- Listening actively builds empathy. You can’t protect people you haven’t taken the time to understand.
- The best solution is almost always the most practical one. If it doesn’t fit how the work actually gets done, it won’t hold.
Everything I write here comes back to those two ideas.
The profession is changing quickly. Data, automation, and AI are arriving on the plant floor alongside the people we’re there to serve. Join me in pushing the boundaries of this profession as it evolves into a digital era where bots and humans coexist.
What You’ll Find in EHS Field Notes
This isn’t a compliance newsletter, and it isn’t safety theory. It’s EHS field notes — what I’m working on, what worked, and what didn’t.
Expect posts on:
Regulatory compliance that holds up. Cal/OSHA, stormwater and SWPPP work, air district permitting, and recordkeeping. These are Safety Management System approaches written from the practical side, not just the textbook side.
Program design. Building programs people actually use: hazard assessments, training that sticks, and audit readiness that doesn’t require a fire drill every quarter.
Incident and root cause analysis. Getting past “employee error” to the systemic causes underneath, and using your own injury data to find them.
Data and AI tools in EHS. What’s genuinely useful, what’s a demo, and how a small EHS department can put automation to work without a software budget.
Communication and influence. Getting safety heard in the rooms where resources are decided.
I publish every other Thursday — practical notes on compliance, program design, and the tools I’m putting to work on the plant floor.
Testimonials
“Christian has consistently and always supported my team with the process of hiring external candidates for key roles, always putting safety at the top of our minds as leaders.
Christian models and coaches and follows up and through, with open actions that could impact our employees’ occupational health and safety.
Thank you for leading us to a safer world.
“I appreciate working alongside Christian. His practical approach to occupational safety and his knowledge of LEAN thinking are tools that made his programs effective on the shop floor.”
“I truly enjoyed working with Christian. Beyond his strong work ethic, his empathetic leadership style makes him an exceptionally clear and effective communicator across all teams.”
Lets Discuss…
Lets discuss your approach. I’m always willing to learn from and share new insights with other environmental, health, and safety professionals, whether you’re tackling a program that isn’t landing, comparing notes on a regulation, having differences of opinion with your AI, or just want to push back on something I wrote.
Send me an email and I’ll write back.