Saving lives with good listening.
Before her current assignment ensuring worker health and safety for EBMUD’s wastewater system, Edna managed an audit program that reviewed safety compliance at over one hundred EBMUD facilities. As a result, she has been inside more EBMUD facilities—from water treatment plants to pumping plants – in the past two years than many other employees have in their entire careers. As a result of Edna’s visits, her colleagues can feel more safe and at ease in their workplaces.
Prior to joining EBMUD, Edna worked as an environmental health and safety professional in the oil and gas industry in Houston, Texas, and in her home country of Kenya. She says the best way to make the work environment safer is by engaging the people doing the work. “I go out there and listen to them. I like to talk to people. It makes me understand better what challenges they are going through.”
Edna loves working for EBMUD, because everybody has “a great attitude and a team spirit.” She says that her colleagues remind her of her favorite basketball team, the Golden State Warriors, because they prioritize teamwork over a single star player. “The whole team moves together like different parts of a highly functional machine.”
“Respect is really the first thing that we have to give to each other.”