Her Story
About Amber
Amber Swindall is an environmental health and safety manager with more than two decades of hands-on experience in the field. Her career has taken her through several major manufacturing environments, including a role during the launch of Volkswagen's Chattanooga plant and involvement in the opening of a new paint center at Nissan, where she also served on the Women's Business Energy team. Most recently, she spent over two years as an Environmental Health, Safety, and Sustainability Manager at Sinomax USA, where she built new safety training programs, established emergency action plans across multiple facilities, and led continuous improvement initiatives spanning incident reporting, auditing, and lockout-tagout procedures. Her technical toolkit includes a strong command of OSHA and EPA regulatory standards, and she has built a reputation for translating complex compliance requirements into practical, actionable systems that keep organizations and their people safe.
What distinguishes Swindall's approach is her focus on structure and clarity rather than enforcement alone. She believes the EHS function exists to build the training, certifications, and compliance systems that empower an organization to operate safely, while holding that day-to-day enforcement ultimately rests with management. This philosophy has become the foundation of her doctoral research, currently underway at West Virginia University, where she is examining how well-designed management frameworks can help organizations more clearly define roles and dismantle the barriers that often stand in the way of effective occupational safety and environmental hazard management. She pairs this academic work with a track record of tangible results, having earned recognition such as the Sinomax USA Sustainability Leadership Award and a feature in the Association of Women in Science magazine.
Academically, Swindall has paired real-world experience with rigorous scholarship, completing her bachelor's degree before earning a master's degree in Occupational Health and Safety and going on to complete her doctoral coursework at West Virginia University. She is affiliated with several professional and honor societies, including Phi Kappa Phi and the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society, where she serves as a student affiliate across multiple technical groups. A hard worker at her core, Swindall credits her achievements to persistence and strong communication skills, and she encourages young women entering the field to trust their own abilities rather than let industry expectations define them. Grounded by her personal values of faith, family, and friends, she continues to bring both practical insight and academic depth to the future of environmental health and safety management.
Her Interview
Ten minutes with Amber
01What do you attribute your success to?
I attribute my success to being a hard worker. Beyond that, I credit much of what I've achieved to my ability to communicate effectively with the people around me — that combination of persistence and clear communication has carried me through every stage of my career.
02What advice would you give to young women entering your industry?
My advice is simple: be yourself. Don't let the industry tell you who it wants you to be, and don't let it dictate who you should become. Your resume and your demonstrated ability are what will ultimately get you hired — employers are looking at what you can do, not at who they expect you to be.
03What are the biggest challenges or opportunities in your field right now?
One of the biggest challenges I see is the misunderstanding of the EHS role — we're often perceived simply as the "safety police," which creates organizational barriers that limit how effective we can truly be, including when it comes to handling claims and whistleblower situations. At the same time, I see this as a real opportunity: by developing clear management frameworks that define roles and responsibilities, we can improve training and compliance and make EHS work more manageable and better integrated across departments.
04What values are most important to you in your work and personal life?
The values that matter most to me are what I call my "3 F's" — Faith, Family, and Friends. These are the foundation I carry with me in both my professional and personal life.
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