Todd Hudson
President, Maverick Safety Training
Mentorship Chair, ASSP Columbia Willamette Chapter
Meet Todd Hudson
Maverick Safety Training is a professional development firm that caters to people in the EHS sector, specifically helping them become great trainers. A lot of EHS professionals are technically very knowledgeable, but don’t know how to create and deliver engaging content that people remember and changes behaviors.
What initially drew you to get involved with ASSP and what keeps you engaged?
ASSP’s mission of keeping people healthy and safe really resonated with me. The moment of silence at the national conference’s opening ceremony for workers who lost their lives on the job in the past year is incredibly moving. What keeps me engaged is the passion that members have for that mission and their openness to help each other and embrace new ideas. I spent most of my career in the electronics industry, which is a notoriously secretive. You couldn’t discuss your problems or ask for help outside your company; it felt very isolating.
You just launched ASSP’s first Mentorship Program – thank you! What inspired you to take on this initiative and what do you envision for the program?
I’ve been involved in creating mentoring programs for over 20 years and have seen incredible results…better job performance, higher morale, stronger sense of community. In our chapter, there’s easily over a thousand years of experience that could be shared to everyone’s benefit, both mentees and mentors.
How do you think mentorship can impact the future of the safety profession, especially for those just entering the field?
My training edict is “Teach the fewest people the least amount of content as fast as possible.” Traditional training has a lot of waste, for example too much content, delivered at the wrong time. Well-structured mentoring is virtually waste-free. People learn just what they need when they need it. This approach quickly builds skills and confidence, especially in our emerging professionals who are on the steepest part of the learning curve.
If you could describe the new mentorship program in three words, what would they be and why?
I can do it in two words! Nurturing mastery. “Nurturing” because mentoring is relationship-based learning that caters to the mentee’s needs in the moment. The mentor is there to ensure they succeed. “Mastery” because the goal is to transfer a mentor’s knowledge and wisdom to a mentee, so they perform skillfully and confidently.
Outside of your professional role, what’s something fun people might not know about you?
I’m a fanatic about the movie The Big Lebowski. I went to a Lebowski Fest in L.A. and the Hollywood Reporter printed a picture of me from the costume party.
What’s one challenge you’ve faced in your safety career that helped shape your approach to leadership or mentorship?
When I was a manufacturing manager in the semiconductor industry, there was a freak accident and one of my supervisors got sprayed with a caustic chemical all over his cleanroom bunny suit. What should’ve been a minor incident became a major one when he did everything wrong despite receiving extra safety training. This caused me to question the fundamental effectiveness of traditional training and search for better methods. I’m happy to say I found them, but the bar for safety training must be held extremely high. We need to continually be on the hunt for ever more effective ways of engaging our colleagues and ensure that they will act safely and correctly when the time comes.
What’s a safety topic you’re currently passionate about, and how do you stay up to date in such a fast-evolving field?
I’ve been teaching clients how to use AI as a role play partner to practice and prepare for tough, uncomfortable safety conversations. It’s revolutionary! This use of AI ties into my love of mentoring. They’re both about helping people quickly build their skills and confidence on specific challenges they’re facing at the moment.
Keeping up with the changes in the AI space is almost impossible; there’s too much happening too quickly. That said, I read several AI blogs and do a lot of experimenting with the technology on my own.