True to her nickname, which means counselor, Janice "Landra" Raible has leveraged a B.S. in Chemical Engineering with her keen sense of internal and external customer focus to build a 30-year EHS career in manufacturing, construction, and most recently, freelance consulting. Raible received her employer’s top recognition program award for covering the vacant safety manager role throughout 2021 while fulfilling core responsibilities (environmental compliance and sustainability) and facilitating continual improvement of EHS programs and performance. She was a values and behaviors ambassador and the single point of accountability for her business unit’s management of change program at BP.
A lifelong learner, Raible relentlessly researches history to understand the present and design a better future. Through theoretical learning, practical experience and a mid-career break with international travel, she gained a keen sense of how to create value through ethical values and an in-depth understanding of the need to learn on the fly, convert chaos to organization, solve problems, manage vision and purpose, and deliver on promises.
She cares deeply about EHS issues both locally and globally. Her project teams won three community safety awards for oil pollution prevention initiatives. She organized six household hazardous waste collection events, which functioned as fundraisers for local charities. She was an industry representative on the Lake County, IN, Emergency Planning Committee for five years and on the Purdue University Northwest EHS Academic Advisory Committee for 11 years. She served as content coordinator and is currently the professional development chair for ASSP’s Environmental Practice Specialty.
While highly experienced and qualified, with a long list of wins in my EHS career, I’m not an ideal leadership candidate on paper. My career doesn’t comprise an uninterrupted series of full-time roles with increasing levels of responsibility and status. I have employment gaps due to layoffs, eldercare responsibilities and tending to my own burnout. My most recent employer failed and was auctioned off in pieces. Prior to that, I walked away from a job due to the company’s ongoing cash-flow problems and a lack of support for a #MeToo encounter.
But I never gave up on my career or on myself. I am committed to the EHS field and to making the world a safer and cleaner place to live and work. I am committed to getting back up every time something knocks me down, and my record thus far is 100%. That makes me a very good bet, even if it doesn’t look that way using conventional success metrics. Most importantly, I’m committed to staying humble, to personal and professional growth, and to sharing my expertise and lessons learned with others. I’m, therefore, a good fit for a leadership role with a people-centered organization.
As the Environmental Practice Specialty’s assistant administrator I will support the administrator, mentor the new professional development chair, and address the results of the recent analysis of our member community's strengths, opportunities, weaknesses and threats. These actions align with ASSP’s CLEAR values and 2023-28 strategic plan for member community, being a trusted advisor and workforce development. Specific areas of focus include Advisory Committee succession planning and clarity of roles and responsibilities; diversity, equity and inclusion, especially regarding emerging professionals; improving communication with local chapters and other communities; and agility in adapting to ever-changing member needs. With eternal optimism and a commitment to leave things better than I found them, I’m excited to get started!