Meet Kelly Sampliner, a Consultant at Antea Group, located out of the White Plains, New York office.
Name:
Kelly Sampliner
Office:
Practice Area:
Area(s) of expertise:
Health and safety management system support, program development and implementation, and health and safety audits and risk assessments.
About Me:
Hi! I’m Kelly. I was born and raised in the Greater New York City area. I currently reside in Hawthorne, New York with my husband, Jeremy, and my Australian Labradoodle, Molly.
What is your favorite thing about being a Health and Safety practitioner?
I thoroughly enjoy health and safety because I feel that it makes an impact in our clients’ everyday operations. I wear many hats as a health and safety practitioner which allows me to be able to support our clients in a number of different ways. It also ensures that I am constantly learning. There is SO much to learn and know in this field. I know I’ll never be a subject matter expert in everything, but one of the benefits of working at Antea Group is to be able to lean on those experts and to continue to grow as a practitioner.
When you were a kid, what did you want to be when you grew up?
When I was younger, I had always wanted to be a marine biologist. I love ocean life, especially whales. Then, I realized two reasons why that may not be the best career path for me: I get seasick easily and I’m quite pale (it’s those Irish genes!). Spending most of my time on a boat just didn’t seem feasible for those reasons, so I settled for attending the occasional whale watch and learning about them in my spare time.
What is a key ingredient for success as a Health and Safety practitioner?
Persistence has been the key for my success. I transitioned my career to focus on health and safety, and that certainly didn’t happen overnight. Having a flexible outlook and diving into subjects that you may not have much experience in as opportunities arise (with the support of senior practitioners), is helpful to get your feet wet and to understand what area of health and safety you want to focus on.
If you had one month off, where would you go or what would you do?
I’d start my month off by visiting Ireland. The first and only time I was there I was seven years old and was visiting family, but I’d love to go back. After that, I’d go on at least a week-long meditation retreat. A friend and I were supposed to attend meditation retreats back in June and November 2020, but they were both cancelled due to the pandemic.
What area(s) of Health and Safety are you most interested in? Why?
Perhaps I’m biased because I lead the Management Systems Service Line, but I really enjoy working with clients to develop and implement management systems. They are the backbone of an entire health and safety program and define overall operations for an organization. I enjoy working with clients to understand what will work best for them to develop a completely customized approach. Even certifiable management systems (such as ISO) can be implemented very differently from organization to organization, and I like to take the time to really dig into what their drivers are to ensure the management system is appropriate and can be feasibly implemented.
What’s your favorite part of your job?
My favorite part of my job is the diversity in my assignments. Every day is different. One day I may be conducting an audit, the next I may be focusing on leading and growing my accounts. I could be supporting our teams internally to ensure they have the guidance they need to respond to a client request, or I could be doing all of those things in one day. Being a Health and Safety Practitioner means being dynamic and working to solve our clients’ problems in a field that’s constantly evolving.
Is there something unique that people might not know about you?
Before I started my career with Antea Group, I was training to be a classical Pilates instructor. When I was in college, I needed a few credits during my last semester to live on campus, so I signed up for a Pilates class thinking, “How hard could it be?” Well, it turns out, it was pretty hard but I loved it! After I graduated, I went back to that studio and enrolled in teacher training. While I don’t currently teach, I still practice it every week and have been for over ten years.
