Joanne Garlick

Organisations engage Jo for her grounded, practical approach to safety leadership design, onsite safety leadership coaching, and facilitation within complex, high-risk environments. She understands the realities leaders face in operational settings and facilitates conversations that meet people where they are, building trust quickly while maintaining a strong focus on standards, accountability, and behaviour.

Jo is known for designing, facilitating and project managing engaging safety leadership workshops that translate strategic cultural intent into practical, everyday leadership conversations. Her work helps leaders move from discussion to action, equipping them with shared language, clear expectations, and tools they can immediately apply on the job to strengthen safety culture and lead confidently in dynamic, risk-laden environments.

Her facilitation style combines deep listening, thoughtful challenge, and structured activities that encourage reflection, peer learning, and behavioural shift — not just awareness. She is particularly passionate about supporting leaders to lead difficult safety conversations, influence culture through daily actions, and create teams where safety, respect, and performance are actively owned.

Whether in the room or out on site, Jo helps leaders build capability to recognise risk, respond constructively, and model the behaviours that keep people safe. She brings more than two decades of experience facilitating safety leadership development across high-risk environments across Australia, NZ, Asia and North and South America, spanning industries including mining, oil and gas, rail, banking, utilities, manufacturing, construction and government.

Jo partnered with leaders in a 140-year-old culture in a rail organisation during a major structural transformation, facilitating leadership initiatives over 12 months, including a safety leadership workshop focused on leading in high-risk environments. She effectively guided leaders through periods of resistance and complex change, supporting both physical and psychological wellbeing. Over five years, the organisation successfully transitioned into two entities while significantly reducing unsafe acts and incidents.

Jo also designed and delivered a three-day Manager as Coach leadership initiative for a financial services organisation, engaging 50 managers. The program was supported by a series of one-on-one and group coaching sessions between facilitation days. This blended approach significantly strengthened leaders’ capability to lead more effective performance conversations, support accountability, and drive stronger outcomes through their teams, contributing to improved engagement and client outcomes.