Thought Leader
Areas of Expertise
- Serious Injury and Fatality Prevention
- Leadership Development
- Exposure Elimination Expert
Erika Gwilt is a consulting professional whose strength in leadership development and business strategy support enables her to help clients engage their entire workforce in improving safety outcomes. Erika’s areas of expertise include leadership coaching, sustainable safety performance, serious injury and fatality analysis, and measurement of program effectiveness.
“I love linking positive safety results, in active and practical ways, with behaviors that support them.”
Erika specializes in evaluating and measuring the effectiveness of existing programs and designing customized, behavior-based safety initiatives that create sustainable improvements that help corporate leaders realize their overall vision for safety. Linked to this interest is her passion for developing people: she works with groups and individuals to enhance their safety knowledge and their ability to develop the leadership skills of the managers of their organizations.
Erika has partnered with global clients in the oil and gas, utilities, steel manufacturing, transportation, chemical, food service, and manufacturing sectors. She has directed and implemented significant projects to control serious injury and fatality (SIF) exposures for U.S. as well as global companies, resulting in measurable reductions in both SIF potential exposures and actual SIF events.
Before joining DEKRA, Erika was the assistant vice president of Learning and Organization Development at BNSF Railway Company. There, she initiated impact evaluations of the company’s safety leadership training program, which gave executives new insight into operational safety, as well as the level of engagement of its union workforce in safety initiatives. She developed new programs in leadership development and in mentorship for the organization’s leaders.
As Northwest Airlines’ director of Ground Operations Education and Leadership Development, Erika worked closely with FAA representatives to ensure employee security training, regulatory compliance, and procedural integrity. Her efforts helped Northwest achieve benchmark results in the FAA’s ATOS audits twice during her tenure and achieve rankings in the top 10 of Training magazine’s Top 100 Training Organizations.
Erika holds a B.A. degree in psychology from the University of Oregon and a Master of Professional Studies degree from the Cornell University School of Hotel Administration. Her honors monograph is titled, “Critical Success Factors: A Vertical Approach.”
Erika lives in Fort Worth, Texas, where she spends her leisure time throwing the ball for her dog, reading, and creating amigurumi. She volunteers alongside her husband with the local Boy Scouts of America and two local charities focused on assisting the homeless in Fort Worth.