Global EHS Executive · Certified Professional Coach · CSP, ASP · Founder, The Justin Initiative

The first is expertise. I have spent more than 15 years inside some of the world's most complex organizations — helping executive teams understand how work really happens, where risk lives, and what it takes to build a culture where people speak up before harm occurs. I have worked on both sides of the EHS equation: as an organizational leader inside high-consequence industries and as a consultant, keynote speaker, and coach helping organizations transform from the outside.
The second is loss. In 2004, my husband Justin died at 27 from a workplace exposure he didn't know existed. He was brilliant, compassionate, and deeply committed to the people around him. I was 24 and pregnant with our son Graham, who never met his father. Losing Justin changed everything I understood about safety — not as a compliance function, but as a human one.
Those two things are inseparable in my work. The strategy is sharper because the stakes are personal. And the mission is more urgent because I have lived what happens when safety culture fails the people it was meant to protect.
I hold a Master of Science in Environmental and Chemical Sciences and a Bachelor of Science in Education from McNeese State University. I am a Certified Safety Professional (CSP), Associate Safety Professional (ASP), and Master Certified Coach (MCC) . That combination gives me both the technical depth to understand complex risk environments and the human skills to develop leaders who can navigate them.
Before becoming a full-time EHS leader, I spent more than a decade in secondary and post-secondary education — teaching and developing curriculum in Psychology and Sociology. That foundation shapes everything about how I approach organizational culture, human behavior, and the conditions that allow risk to go unrecognized.
Throughout my career I have worked with global organizations including GE, ABB, Kinder Morgan, L'Oréal, Colgate-Palmolive, ICONEX, BOSTCO, PCA, and ITC — as well as advising in the EHS technology space as both a practitioner and a platform evaluator. In every environment, the focus has been the same: help organizations understand how work actually happens, strengthen the leaders responsible for keeping people safe, and build systems that prevent the incidents that change lives forever.
I am also neurodivergent, and I bring that lived experience directly into my work on Human-Centered Safety, psychological safety, and building environments where every kind of mind can perform safely and well. This is not a side conversation. It belongs at the center of what safety leadership must become.
Most safety systems are built around the assumption that workers are the variable to be controlled. The Human-Centered Safety Model starts from the opposite premise: workers are the solution to be heard. Leaders are the variable that matters most. And the gap between how work is designed and how work is done is exactly where serious harm lives.
My two proprietary frameworks operationalize this model across two dimensions — one for organizational assessment and advisory work, one for defining what a transformed safety culture actually looks and feels like.
C — Critical Risk Identification & Prioritization
Where are the highest-consequence exposures in your organization, and is leadership aligned around them?
L — Leadership & Psychological Safety Evaluation
Do your leaders understand the conditions that create invisible risk — and do they have the behaviors to change them?
E — Exposure & Controls
Are your existing controls actually working as designed? What is the gap between assumed protection and real protection?
A — Action Effectiveness & Auditing
When your organization identifies a hazard, what actually happens?
Are corrective actions closing risk or creating the appearance of it?
R — Reporting Culture & Culture Synthesis
Are your people speaking up? If not — why not?
And what is that silence costing you?
W — Wellbeing Every worker's physical and psychological safety is a non-negotiable starting point — not a benefit program.
O — Ownership Safety culture is not owned by the safety department. It lives in the daily choices of every leader at every level.
R — Respect Workers who are treated with genuine respect are workers who speak up. Respect is not soft. It is strategic.
T — Training Real safety training develops thinking, not just compliance. It builds the capacity to recognize and respond to risk in real conditions.
H — Human-Centered Design Safety systems must be designed around how people actually work — not around how we wish they worked.
Y — You Go Home Whole The standard is not "no fatalities." The standard is that every worker goes home whole — physically, psychologically, and with their dignity intact.
I don't arrive with a pre-built program and hand it over. I come to listen — to understand your organization's specific risks, culture, leadership dynamics, and gaps. Every engagement is built around what your people actually need, not what looks good on a slide.
Whether I am on a keynote stage or inside an executive coaching conversation, the same principles hold: safety culture lives and dies with leadership behavior. Psychological safety is not a soft concept — it is a survival mechanism. And the gap between what leaders intend and what workers experience is exactly where serious harm lives.
I work with organizations as a keynote speaker and thought leader, as an advisory partner for culture and risk transformation, and as an executive coach for leaders who want to close that gap — permanently.
Justin Yellott was 27 years old when he died from a workplace exposure he didn't know existed. He was brilliant, compassionate, and deeply committed to the people around him. I was 24. I was pregnant. Our son Graham never met his father.
In the years that followed, I founded The Justin Initiative in Justin's memory — not as a monument to grief, but as a commitment to action. What began as personal loss became a professional mission: to ensure that organizations understand what is truly at stake when safety culture fails, and to give families like mine a reason to believe things can be different.
The Justin Initiative brings Justin's story directly into organizations through keynote speaking, leadership workshops, and safety culture advocacy. It is the most personal expression of everything I believe about this work — and the reason I will never stop doing it.
"Aron didn't just manage me — she coached me. She had this unwavering belief that every person deserved to go home the same way they arrived, and that passion for people extended far beyond safety. She saw potential in me that I couldn't see in myself and asked the right questions to help me figure out what I actually wanted. In a short time, she helped me get out of my own way. I went back to school, earned my bachelor's degree, and built a career I'm proud of. Aron has a rare gift — she makes you believe that your next chapter is possible."
MS, Environmental & Chemical Sciences
McNeese State University
BS, Education
McNeese State University
Certified Safety Professional (CSP)
Associate Safety Professional (ASP)
Master Certified Coach (MCC)
State Specific Certifications
Keynote Speaking & Safety Culture Advocacy
Serious Injury & Fatality Prevention
Human & Organizational Performance (HOP)
Psychological Safety & Speak-Up Culture
Human-Centered Safety Leadership Development
Executive & Safety Leader Coaching
Neurodiversity in Safety-Critical Environments
EHS Systems & Software Advisory
GE · ABB · Kinder Morgan L'Oréal USA · Colgate-Palmolive ICONEX · BOSTCO · PCA · ITC + EHS technology sector clients
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