Welcome from the Chapter President

What an exciting time this is to be a member of the ASSP and, especially, the Long Beach Chapter! As your new President, I want to take just a few minutes to share with all of you the great things that are coming up in our chapter, and the awesome opportunities available to all of you.

First, the Joint Technical Symposium is right around the corner! This year’s event, 19 October 2022 in Carson, is packed with great speakers and the opportunity to truly network with your fellow safety professionals. I am thrilled that our keynote speaker this year is Dr. Howard, Director of NIOSH. The event is open for registration, and I strongly encourage you to sign up today by visiting http://www.CalJTS.com/. Our dedicated team is submitting the required paperwork to ensure that CEUs are awarded for the JTS.

Second, we have been listening carefully to our membership, and we have put together a slate of speakers for our monthly Technical Sessions that you will certainly enjoy. The first in-person Technical Session will be held on September 15, 2022 at noon at the Golden Corral located in Bellflower, CA. Lunch will be provided by the Chapter at no cost to members, so come join us for this informative (and tasty) event!

Nothing is more important to the vitality of a local chapter than the active participation of its members. We are truly fortunate to have more than 140 members in the Long Beach Chapter—each with a background and skillset unique to their experiences! We need your participation, your input, and your energy to keep our Chapter the Gold Level member that it is. I encourage each of you to reach out to either our VP, Chris Rainwater or to myself to let us know if you have any questions or would like additional information about getting involved in our Chapter.

On behalf of the Executive Committee and all of the ASSP, thank you for everything that you do day in and day out to promote our great profession! I look forward to meeting you all over the course of the coming year!

Karen Townsend

Each and every one of you do amazing work as safety professionals. Now, for the first time, we want to feature our members “in action” as they enhance the safety profession in a million different ways.

Many of you work in the private sector in a myriad of professions — from healthcare to warehouses and construction to aviation. Still others of you work in the public sector, bringing your expertise to local, state, and federal government agencies. It is no exaggeration to say that our membership represents a huge swath of the safety profession with incredible depth and experience!

We are asking all members to submit a photo of you “in action” as a safety professional. Perhaps you were teaching a class, performing an inspection, attending a conference… share it! Simply send your photos, along with a brief caption explaining the photo, to VPLBASSP@gmail.com. The photos will be uploaded to our Chapter website in a brand new page called “Members in Action!”

If you have any questions, please email Chapter VP Chris Rainwater at the email address shown above or call him at 970-301-9434. Let’s send in those photos today!

The Safety Professional of the Year Award from the Long Beach Chapter is awarded to an ASSP member who demonstrates outstanding achievement in the occupational safety and health (OSH) field while also advancing the OSH profession overall.  Rich has been our President twice, President-elect, Vice-President, Treasurer five times, Secretary, and Delegate for our Chapter’s Executive Committee.

Rich’s long term volunteer record for the Long Beach Chapter may have ended when he relocated to the San Francisco area in 2021, however, his dedication to the safety profession and the American Society of Safety Professionals continues to this day.  We celebrate the dedication and integrity of Rich Sestokas, and honor him by naming him our Safety Professional of the Year.