Amanda Oates Editor

Sidney Dekker (PhD Ohio State University, USA, 1996) is Professor and Director of the Safety Science Innovation Lab at Griffith University in Brisbane, Australia, and Professor at the Faculty of Aerospace Engineering at Delft University in the Netherlands. Sidney has lived and worked in seven countries across four continents and won worldwide acclaim for his groundbreaking work in human factors and safety. He coined the term ‘Safety Differently’ in 2012, which has since turned into a global movement for change. It encourages organizations to declutter their bureaucracy and set people free to make things go well, and to offer compassion, restoration and learning when they don’t. An avid pilot of planes large and small, he has been flying the Boeing 737 as airline pilot on the side. Sidney is bestselling author of, most recently: Foundations of Safety Science; The Safety Anarchist; The End of Heaven; Just Culture; Safety Differently; The Field Guide to Understanding ‘Human Error’; Second Victim; Drift into Failure; and Patient Safety. He has directed the documentaries ‘Safety Differently,’ 2017; ‘Just Culture,’ 2018, ’The Complexity of Failure,’ 2018, and ‘Doing Safety Differently,' 2019. His work has over 12,200 citations and an h-index of 47. More at sidneydekker.com.

Amanda Oates is a highly experienced, dynamic and motivated HR Director with experience gained within both public and private sectors across the full spectrum of HR and OD. An individual who possesses sound technical knowledge, excellent communication skills while dealing with complex organizational change or extremely sensitive issues. She is an articulate, credible professional with a solid reputation. She’s a high achiever who can demonstrate that she can adapt, find solutions and deliver results in a constantly changing and political environment. She is currently the Executive Director of Workforce, Mersey Care NHS FT where she has executive responsibility for the Workforce including strategic, advisory and transactional services for HR, Learning and Development, Education, Organizational Effectiveness, Leadership, Occupational Health and Well-being Service, Succession Planning and Compensation and Benefits.

Joe Rafferty BSc, PhD, CBE is the Chief Executive for Mersey Care NHS FT. He’s an accomplished leader able to balance innovation and pragmatism, combining the capability to anticipate the implications of an intricate policy agenda with the ability to understand and be sensitive to the concerns they can raise from a range of individual and cultural perspectives. An inclusive and constructive thinker, with senior experience in primary research and organizational change, who welcomes challenges, deals with obstacles and recognizes the need for change to add value from both a patient, clinical, research and a public perspective. Mr. Raffery is a strong strategic leader, motivator and team builder with the capability to generate original ideas that constructively shape the behavior of the NHS system and beyond, while never losing sight of the important day to day objectives of the organization. A tactful but firm decision-maker with a very successful track record of delivering large scale, sustainable changes to healthcare delivery.