Katie Allen

I started my environmental career about 25 years ago when I was working at Speedway's corporate office on third shift and needed a first shift position. They had an opening in the Environmental Compliance Department, and that's what started it all. I stayed with Speedway for exactly 15 years. I've been in EHS specifically for about 6 years now. I recently started as the EHS Manager at Invosys in mid-April after being laid off from CSP in March. It's a smaller facility with more of a family feel, which is great because being smaller, I'm able to actually talk and work with all of the floor associates. That's essential in any type of safety position - gaining their trust, getting to know them, and they're more apt to bring hazardous conditions to your attention. It's a growing company, hopefully expanding here in the near future, which will allow my role to expand as well. Right now I'm basically trying to get their policies brought up to date, kind of pushing them towards the ISO standard, so that eventually, hopefully, maybe we can get the ISO 14001 and 45001 done. What I'm most proud of in my career, other than finally earning my degrees, was the achievement at CSP where I made it a point to be out on the floor on all shifts. They weren't used to seeing safety out on the floor - EHS worked basically a 7-3 job. I was going in on third shift, going around and talking to everybody, asking questions, and I got so many compliments for doing that. I didn't do it for the compliments, I did it so I could do my job better, but it made me realize that they needed that type of connection. When we had major events going on, I was out there working right alongside them. CSP had a fire last year, and hourly was out there doing the cleanup, and I came in in old clothes and was out there sweeping up floor oil dry just like everybody else. When we would do standard machine projects where you pick a certain area and return it to like new condition, I was out there doing that. I would go absolutely filthy, but it felt good - sitting outside doing something like that, I'm being productive but also doing something relaxing.