Laurie Shelby
VP, EHS & Security
Tesla
Real or Fake Safety – Make your choice
Innovative companies like Tesla move fast and have exponential growth. To stay ahead of the speed at which we move, we must ensure we build the capacity to fail safely into our DNA. This presentation will share how Tesla builds capacity using Human and Organizational principles to learn and improve across its operations including the core principle that “Safeguards Saves Lives”.
Risk is an inherent part of moving fast and innovating, we are often in uncharted territory. We know that the conditions that have the potential to trigger failures exist all around us, and Operational Learning helps us shine a light on those conditions (the context). We never run out of opportunities to improve our systems even when “nothing” happens.
We reason from first principles thinking which starts with how we define safety and health excellence. First principles boil things down by fundamental truths and reason upward from there. A zero- incident mindset will not foster a culture of learning and continuous improvements. Building a culture that understands what safe means to all levels of the organization and how to measure safety are key to driving real safety… or you can just keep faking it.
Laurie Shelby joined Tesla Inc. as their EHS Vice President in October 2017. She leads worldwide EHS, Sustainability, and Security for over 130,000 employees in the automotive, energy, and sales, service, delivery operations.
Previously, she was the EHS Vice President for Alcoa Inc. where she led the global EHS across mining, refining, smelting, and rolling operations. Prior roles at Alcoa included EHS Director for United States primary aluminum operations and EHS global audit Manager.
Laurie is a leader on serious injury reduction and is a human and organizational performance expert known for her new view thinking to drive improvements.
Laurie completed her bachelor’s degree in chemistry from Radford University. She earned her master’s in Industrial Hygiene/Biomedical Engineering from Virginia Commonwealth University/Medical College of Virginia. Laurie is also a Certified Safety Professional (CSP) and Certified Industrial Hygienist (CIH).
Laurie and her husband live in Austin, Texas but they are both native Virginians. They have 2 daughters who are also helping change the world!