Last month, Assistant Secretary of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration Dr. David Michaels held an OSHA Employees All-Hands Meeting. OSHA employees who were not able to attend the meeting in person were able to participate through the web.

All this week, ISHN is presenting excerpts from Michaels’ talk at that meeting.

Here is the last installment:

OSHA personnel for 2013, the first team

One of OSHA's most important resources is our senior staff:

• Kim Locey, director of Administrative Programs,
• Tom Galassi, director of our Enforcement Program,
• Jim Maddux, director of Construction,
• Mandy Edens, our new director of Technical Support and Emergency Management,
• Beth Slavet, head of our new Directorate of Whistleblower Protection Programs,
• Dorothy Dougherty, director of Standards and Guidance.

Thanks also to Hank Payne out in Arlington, Illinois, our director of Training and Education, and to Diana Cortez, who has been acting here at our National Office in our Directorate of Evaluation and Analysis for the last few months. And thanks to Doug Kalinowski, our new director for Cooperative and State Programs, who isn't here in the auditorium today but who we are very glad to have on board.

And I want to recognize and thank our Regional Administrators-our senior staff in the field. Thank you to Marthe Kent in Region 1, Bob Kulick in Region 2, Mary Ann Garrahan in Region 3, Nick Walters in Region 5, John Hermanson in Region 6, Chuck Adkins in Region 7, Greg Baxter in Region 8, Ken Atha in Region 9 and Dean Ikeda in Region 10. Last week, Cindy Coe, our esteemed Regional Administrator from Region 4 retired from the agency after many decades of service. She will be sorely missed and we wish her luck in her new endeavors. We welcome Terri Harrison as the Acting Administrator in Region 4.

I also want to thank our Deputy Regional Administrators - and our Area Directors - for their hard work, their leadership, and for their unwavering commitment to worker safety and health. They have been working tirelessly with you to make sure workers are protected.

Vigorous enforcement

As we move forward in 2013, let's work together to continue our vigorous enforcement of employers who refuse to follow the law, and let's continue to use the Severe Violator Enforcement Program to pursue the worst of the worst offenders. Let's also continue to recognize the best of the best employers through VPP and SHARP, and to offer compliance assistance to small businesses in need of our help. And just as Secretary Solis helped us to make inroads with our country's most vulnerable workers-no matter whether they have limited English proficiency or if it's their first day on the job-let's continue our vigorous outreach and education to those who need it most.

I have identified some of the main areas that we will focus on over the coming years. And as we move forward in 2013, I ask for your continued support in putting all of these pieces together. As I said before, you are each a critical component of the OSHA team. I know we are a small agency with a large job -and each of you have worked so hard to make all this possible.

Even as you are stretched to your limits, you never fail to face new challenges with the zest and passion that make this agency great. Each part of what we do - from standard setting, to enforcement to compliance assistance to recognition programs - is important individually. But the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, and only together can we truly fulfill the mission of this agency.