May 2023 Newsletter
Leadership Changes
Shelia Gottschalk has resigned as the President of SPSP and has dropped off of the Board. The Board thanks her for all of her efforts (described in more detail below) and wishes her best of luck in the future. We will miss her energy and wise counsel.
Shelia will be succeeded as President by Don Mays. Don is Founder of Product Safety Insights LLC, a consulting enterprise, and was formerly the Chief Safety and Quality Officer at Samsung Electronics NA. He also served as Managing Director, Product Safety and Quality at Deloitte, Vice President of Retail and Consumer Product Services at Intertek, and Senior Director, Product Safety and Technical Policy at Consumer Reports. Don is currently Chairman of ASTM’s F15 Committee on Consumer Products and a board member of Kids In Danger.
Don was previously Vice President of SPSP. He will be succeeded by Laurel Roney, Vice President, Toy Safety, Compliance and Quality at Spin Master. Previously, she was at Swimways and JMW Sales in the quality and compliance areas. Laurel is a graduate of ADK’s Advanced Product Safety Management Program and has been on the SPSP board for several years.
As a result of these changes, there is an opening on the SPSP Board. In addition, the Board will be considering whether to add additional members. If you would be interested in being considered for a Board position, please email Ken Ross, who is on the nominating committee, at kenrossesq@gmail.com.
Thanks to Shelia Gottschalk
By John A. Barrera
Sr. Director of Product Quality, Best Choice Products
Past President SPSP, 2019-2022
Shelia Gottschalk is a highly regarded professional in the Consumer Product Safety field, and it has been demonstrated through her leadership, integrity, and ability over a 30+ year career. She will certainly be missed as she retires from the field and from the Society of Product Safety Professionals (SPSP).
I first met Shelia while attending the ADK Advanced Product Safety Management course at Saint Louis University in 2015. At the time, Shelia worked for Hallmark, Inc. and I worked for The Walt Disney Company. We struck a bond in that we shared many common products between us, and we both genuinely enjoyed our professions and shared the same values about protecting consumers, our brands, and our companies. We also shared the philosophy that education and training were the cornerstone of continuously improving product safety across the globe, whether it be for retailers, licensors, manufacturers, service providers, or any others who had influence on how a product was designed, produced, or sold.
As the week’s long ADK Advanced Product Safety Management course concluded, we informally met over a last dinner with other product safety and compliance colleagues, including Larry Bell from Bosch, Sherri Cain from Hobby Lobby, Norma Jean DeSpain from HEB, and Catherine Wernecke from Target, and discussed what we could possibly do as next steps for continuous education and training in the field; we knew there was more to learn. We thought, “what’s next?” That is, what comes after the advanced class? How can we learn more and how do we go about it? We also wondered how to provide other training opportunities to product safety professionals at all levels, from beginners to experts in the field.
That is when our small group produced the idea of creating an organization that would help support product safety professionals in education, leadership, and service. It took about a year, but with the guidance and coaching from Don Kornblet, President of ADK Information Services, in 2016 we were able to establish a new non-profit organization to address these questions; thus was born the Society of Product Safety Professionals. A Board of Directors was established, and Shelia was quickly and unanimously elected President of the new, young organization; she had the knowledge, ability, and discipline it would take to lead the organization through the future and accomplish its lofty goals.
Shelia resigned as SPSP President in 2018 to dedicate time to pursue professional certification in the consumer product safety field and become a Certified Product Safety Professional (CPSP) through ADK and SPSP. She succeeded in achieving the distinguished designation of Certified Product Safety Professional in 2019. Then, as the first SPSP Board of Directors was transitioning to a new board in 2022, Shelia was nominated and unanimously voted to again fill the role of SPSP President to lead the organization. Shelia has been instrumental in establishing SPSP as a reputable organization that is recognized for its contribution to the product safety community.
We will miss you, Shelia! Thanks for all you have brought to the product safety profession and SPSP!
SPSP’s webinar series
SPSP has presented three webinars this year on the CPSC, post-sale incident investigation and analysis, and data analytics. The slides and recordings for these three webinars (and all of our past webinars) can be accessed at https://www.productsafetyprofessionals.org/webinar-archive.
In May, SPSP will present a webinar on insurance guidance on product safety. And in June, we will have UK lawyers tell us about international developments in product safety requirements. There are significant changes in the UK and the EU that you all should know about.
Starting again in September, topics we are considering are warnings and instructions updates, recall effectiveness, and post-sale safety improvements. If you have ideas for additional topics for the webinar series, email Ken Ross, webinar coordinator, at kenrossesq@gmail.com.
ADK/SPSP Programs
2023 PRODUCT SAFETY PROFESSIONAL CERTIFICATION PROGRAM (March 22-June 7)
The program’s opening workshop was held at Virginia Tech Research Center in Arlington, VA on March 22-23. The group of eight class members came from a variety of industries and geographic locations. Participants included: Delfina Anderson, Vice President of Product Integrity at Goldbug, a distributor of infant and toddler apparel and accessories; Jacob Borowiec, Reliability Engineering Manager at Hasbro, Inc., specializing in the safety, compliance, and reliability of toys; Jessica Doyle, the Director of Quality and Compliance for the Boppy Company; Sanjay Kotia, Manager of Product Safety, Compliance & Quality Assurance and Beth Millard, a quality control professional, both at SnugZ USA, a promotional products company; Jarrod Kuhn, Senior Director of Global Logistics, Trade and Regulatory for Sterno, responsible for worldwide product compliance and safety; Rebecca Kurisko, a Reliability Engineering Manager at Hasbro, Inc., specializing in toy safety and compliance; and Melissa McCright, the Manager of Product Integrity for DICK’S Sporting Goods.
CONSUMER PRODUCT SAFETY FUNDAMENTALS PROGRAM (Beginning June 20th)
The Fundamentals program will be offered through the University of Michigan’s Center for Occupational Health and Safety Engineering (COHSE). The program’s course description has been posted on the SPSP website (https://www.productsafetyprofessionals.org/michigan-fundamentals-program) and was announced with a news release. We have finalized the instructor’s panel and opened registration. The program is specifically designed for new product safety professionals with less than five years of experience, or for those with more experience wanting a refresher course.
PRODUCT SAFETY LEADERSHIP: CRISIS MANAGEMENT (Beginning November 6th)
Following 2022’s successful launch of the crisis management program, we have established a relationship for delivering this program through the University of Missouri, St. Louis (UMSL) College of Business Administration. The school is internationally respected and was named among the Top 25 International Business Programs in the U.S. by U.S. News and World Report. The school has been recognized as among the top three percent of business schools by Princeton Review.
UMSL is home to the Supply Chain Risk and Resilience Research Institute, which conducts research and other program-related activities including those involving managing crises. Registration will open in early June.
JOIN SPSP
Hundreds of product safety professionals are stakeholders in the work of SPSP. They attend our webinars and other programs, download articles and papers from our website, and read our newsletters.
All of this requires financial support. We invite you to formally join SPSP as a paid member. For more information and to sign up, see https://www.productsafetyprofessionals.org/membership. A full membership only costs $125 a year.
Members receive significant discounts in the registration fees for the SPSP/ADK programs.