Wednesday April 3rd, 2019

Keynote Speaker

Ruben Gonzalez
Olympic Athlete, Speaker, Author
Safety and Managing Risk – Secrets of a Four-Time Olympian
Many people think that lugers are adrenaline junkies. On the contrary, lugers as a whole are very analytical and rigorously follow proven processes. They understand that in order to consistently have the best times, they need to manage risk and stay safe because when you are hurt you can’t train.

The adrenaline junkies quit after a few weeks and go on to something else.

Although Ruben enjoys challenging himself with high risk activities, he always manages risk by learning from the experts and doing lots of due diligence before taking action. In sports, at work and in life, you don’t know what you don’t know and what you don’t know can hurt you.

In this presentation Ruben shares the importance of learning what to do and what not to do to stay safe and to produce more.

He does this through entertaining stories about climbing Kilimanjaro, skydiving in South Africa, luging, running with the bulls in Pamplona, and other great high risk experiences where Ruben was able to stay injury free by managing the risk around him.

Thursday April 4th, 2019

Keynote Speaker

Todd Conklin, Ph.D.

 Speaker, Author

Dr. Todd Conklin is an internationally recognized expert in Organizational Culture and Behavior and Human Performance. Working with organizations that perform high-risk, high-consequence activities in ensuring that the interface between the organization’s work control systems and the organization’s workers are crafted in such a way as to create system influences and expected performances and to prevent unexpected events. If prevention efforts fail, lead and assist in failure investigation and learning for organizations that have had some level of high-consequence operational event. The outcome of these investigation and organizational learning activities is to create and facilitate learning change planning, and programming for improved, resilient performance for the future.

Dr. Todd Conklin is a Senior Advisor to the Associate Director, emphasis in Organizational Development and Human Reliability, at Los Alamos National Laboratory where he has served in the Human Resource and Reliability Management and Training arena for the last 15 years. His book : WAYS TO REVITALIZE: SIMPLE REVOLUTIONARY ACTS AND YOUR WORKPLACE helps one, in a fun way, become a positive deviant in the workplace. His most recent book, PRE-ACCIDENT INVESTIGATIONS, provides an introduction to organizational safety.

National Public Radio has hosted him as a guest on “All Things Considered” and “Morning Edition.” Dr. Conklin speaks on Workplace Humor and Friendships; Workplace Violence; High-risk Conflict Organizational Development; and Training for Recognizing Unusual Behavior in the Workplace. This expertise results in a broad spectrum of courses which include Appreciative Inquiry; Organizational Development, Conflict Management and Team Building; Hostage Negotiation 101 and training for Recognizing Unusual Behavior in the Workplace; and Violence in the Workplace. The Appreciative Inquiry model helps groups of people make decisions based upon the past success of the individual members to build lightning fast consensus from groups that often are unable to have agreement around difficult issues. Conflict Management and Team Building is for facilitated sessions to help teams realize a more full potential, create a more positive sociological environment, solve problems, plan ahead, and create new understandings or definitions of scope, schedule, and cost. Hostage Negotiation 101 training teaches the ins and outs of successful negotiation with a hostage taker and is highly specialized for law enforcement and security corporate personnel.

Recent presentations include ideas on how to make changes in companies from what is considered the traditional views of safety concerns, which are becoming outdated and ineffective, to the new Human Performance Safety Theory. This theory invites administration, management and workers to come together to look at systems that lead to accidents and make changes before the accidents occur.

Dr. Conklin has his BA in Communication, Southwestern College, Kansas, an MA in Interpersonal Communication, Fort Hays State University, and a Ph.D in Organizational Communication, University of New Mexico. He currently has his residence and office in Santa Fe, New Mexico and travels worldwide doing consulting and training in organizational development and Human Performance Safety.

2019 Conference Agenda