Conference Speakers

Sorted Alphabetically

Tim Andro

From the Ground Up: The Rebuilding of a PSD Team After an Accident......Day 1, Room 2, 17:00-17:50

Tim Andro is the owner and lead SDI/ERDI instructor for Northeast Public Safety Divers, a premiere public safety dive training center for the northeast U.S. He has almost 20 years of recreational and technical dive experience, including Advanced Trimix and Closed-Circuit Rebreather, and has logged over 3,000 dives. He has also been a firefighter for 22 years, 10 of those as a public safety diver, and is the current Dive Coordinator for Mahwah Fire & Rescue Co #1, and the current Vice President of the North Jersey Regional SCUBA Task Force.

Ashley Bugge

Creating change through story-telling......16:00-16:50 Hall 2

Ashley Bugge is an award-winning author and human behaviour scholar based out of the United States. As an American military widow, she has dedicated her personal and professional pursuits to opening dialogue in emotionally complex scenarios and has modelled this behaviour in the aftermath of the diving accident that claimed her husband's life in May 2018.

Diane Chadwick-Jones

Moving from blame to learning in a high-risk organisation......Day 1, Room 1, 11:00-11:50

Diane is the former Director, Human Performance for BP, where she delivered cultural change and safety improvement including operationalizing a “systems thinking” approach by improving the way work is set up to reduce the possibility of mistakes and make work more effective. Diane now focuses on education and advocacy.

Tim Clements

CCR CE is missing the HF Element
......Day 1, Room 2, 15:00-15:50

Tim started diving in 1990 while studying Marine Biology and Oceanography, becoming a BSAC Advanced Diver, followed by MSc and HSE Part IV qualifications. He is now heavily involved in the RedBare CCR development as well as managing the Vobster Quay dive site.

David G. Concannon

What can happen legally after an incident.....Day 1, Room 1, 17:00-17:50

David Concannon is an attorney with more than 40 years of experience as a scuba diver and 30 years as a trial lawyer in courtrooms around the United States.  Through his law firm, Concannon & Charles, David represents a myriad of clients in the diving industry and he is an expert on the legal issues associated with scuba diving.

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Dave Conlin Ph.D 

"Just Culture" from the Inside- How a Bureaucracy Responded to a Dive Accident."......15:00-15:50 Hall 1

Dave Conlin is the Chief and Director of the US National Park Service's Submerged Resources Center, a small team of underwater archaeologists and Photographers that provide expert services and consulting to US National Parks and Partners. An experienced open, closed and surface-supplied diver with dozens of certifications and thousands of dives, Dave and the team he works with have embraced the study of Human Factors and committed to Just Culture in all operational diving.

Dr Tristan Cope

Decision-making in Uncertainty: From Healthcare to Diving......Day 1, Room 2, 14:00-14:50

Tristan Cope is Executive Medical Director and a consultant in Critical Care Medicine at Liverpool University Hospitals. He is also Lead Clinician at the North West Recompression Unit on the Wirral.

Bart den Ouden

Normalisation of Deviance......Day 1, Room 1, 14:00-14:50

Bart den Ouden is a TDI Advanced Mixed Gas (OC & CC) Instructor Trainer, PADI Course Director and Instructor Trainer for Disabled Divers International (DDI), DAN Europe & Emergency First Response Corp. (EFR). He is also security professional, an examiner for the Dutch Security Exam Board and instructor for The Human Diver and he lives in Rotterdam, Netherlands.

Andrzej Gornicki

The relationship between national culture and safety culture: Implications for diving safety and organizational culture......13:00-13:50 Hall 2

I am a diver. I am also diving instructor. I have been writing articles about diving, teaching and learning diving and diving safety. In 2020, I have engaged in Human Factors Training. Since then I have been writing and translating articles, and sharing HFiD ideas within Polish diving community.

Cdr Geir Gundersen

Crew Resource Management in military diving operations......14:00-14:50 Hall 2

Cdr Gundersen has been a Military clearance diver since 1989 and now the head of the diving department within the Norwegian Military Diving Centre. He has undertaken a number of CRM instructor courses and brought CRM into the Norweigan Diving Centre in 2004.

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Vallorie Hodges

Preventation is not enough......Day 1, Room 1, 12:00-12:50

Vallorie Hodges is the University Diving Officer and Safety & Wellbeing Advisor at the University of Tasmania with a passion for human factors and safety differently.

Robin Kirkpatrick

Commercial diving accident: lessons for technical and recreational divers......Day 1, Room 1, 13:00-13:50

I’ve been a diver since the 1970s and freely admit to a particular passion for wrecks but actually, my real passion is diving, diving of any form.

Pierre Le Fevre

How human factors can influence the outcome in commercial diving......10:00-10:50 Hall 2

Pierre has been an active commercial diver since 1981. Worked from 1981 to 1988 doing inland work and from 1989 onward offshore air diving and saturation diving around the world.

Gareth Lock

A Voyage of Discovery and Change......Day 1, Room 1, 10:00-10:50

The Messy World of Diving: Diving as Imagined vs Diving as Done.....Day 2, Room 1, 14:00-14:50

Continuing the Voyage.....Day 2, Room 1, 17:00-17:50

Gareth is the founder of The Human Diver, an organisation whose goal is to bring HF, non-technical skills and a Just Culture into the diving domain.  He has been working on this since 2010 and would never have thought he'd be running a conference on it!

Jenny Lord 

How to assess and develop Situation Awareness in others......13:00-13:50 Hall 1

Jenny Lord is a TDI Instructor Trainer, Advanced mixed gas CCR diver and instructor for The Human Diver. She lives and works in Dahab, Egypt as a full time instructor of diving, photography and Human Factors.

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Laura Marroni

How are real dive emergencies managed? A behind-the-scenes look at selected cases. ......13:00-13:50 Room 2

Laura is the Executive Vice President of DAN (Divers Alert Network) Europe, and a scuba diving instructor and a passionate technical and cave diver. Her mission is to help promote a culture of safety within the diving industry, continuing what the organisation that now she leads has been doing for over 40 years now.

Mike Mason

Be a better Dive Master. Apply Human Factors......Day 1, Room 2, 12:00-12:50

Mike is an experienced military pilot and flying instructor in his day job and works as a Dive Master at weekends. He is also training to become an instructor for The Human Diver and is always striving to improve diving by applying Human Factors.

Dr Simon Mitchell

Bringing HF into Healthcare: Challenges and Successes......Day 2, Hall 1, 10:00-10:50

Simon is the Professor of Anaesthesiology at the University of Auckland, and a very experienced rebreather diver. He was a member of the original WHO Surgical Safety Checklist study group, and since that study has undertaken extensive research aimed at optimising checklists and their use in the operating room environment. 

Darryl Owen

How HF can help manage risks in a busy dive centre......12:00-12:50 Hall 1

Darryl Owen is a UTD Technical Instructor, RAID Instructor Trainer and Examiner and an Instructor for The Human Diver. He lives in the United Arab Emirates and owns dive centres in both the UAE and Oman that specialise in education, exploration, marine science and photography and videography.

Helene Pellerin

Human Factors for Novice Divers: Why and How? ......15:00-15:50 Hall 2

Helene Pellerin is part of the first cohort of instructors for the Human Diver. She is an Anesthesiologist from Quebec City, Canada and she has a high interest in sharing knowledge on human factors and non-technical skills to divers of all levels.

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Beatrice Rivoira

Message Not Delivered – when communication fails us......11:00-11:50 Hall 2

Beatrice is an Italian vocational diver with a Master’s Degree in Marine Biology and Oceanography. She works around the world as a CCR & OC instructor and participates in diving projects. Delving into HF has been the natural consequence.

Dr Mike Rothschild

Checklists save lives......Day 1. Room 1, 15:00-15:50

I am a pediatric otolaryngologist in New York City, a technical rebreather diver, past-president and dive chair of the New York City Sea Gypsies, and a medical moderator on scubaboard.com. I have published a number of articles (most recently one on mixed rebreather and open circuit dive teams) and I have created and distributed a popular rebreather checklist sticker.

Guy Shockey

Putting HF into Technical Diver Training Programmes......Day 1, Room 1, 16:00-16:50

Guy Shockey is a full time Global Underwater Explorers Instructor Evaluator who teaches all of GUE’s technical diving courses including both OC and CCR. He is a former military officer with experience in military aviation and has a graduate degree in political science. He is also one of the first Human Diver instructors and he is passionate about including Human Factor’s training in all his technical dive training.

Matthijs Smith

Changing attitudes to mistakes in your dive club......Day 1, Room 2, 11:00-11:50

Matthijs is an active recreational diver based in Melbourne and is the current President of the Victorian Sub-Aqua Group, one of the longest-running dive clubs in the world.

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Dr Frauke Tillmans 

DAN Incident Reporting - a work in progress......Day 1, Room 2, 16:00-16:50

Frauke Tillmans is the Research Director at Divers Alert Network. With a PhD in human biology and extensive experience in different areas of diving, including recreational, technical, cave, scientific, and public safety, she has brought some new perspectives into the injury monitoring initiatives at DAN.

Chris Tibble

The Application of Human Factors as an Average Diver......12:00-12:50 Hall 2

Chris is, and always has been, an average diver.

Sally Tindall

From the Stars to the Sea: How Aviation/Aerospace Human Factors has infiltrated Diving and how diving is improving our ability to go to space......11:00-11:50 Hall 1

Sally Tindall is a commercial airline pilot who took up diving to pursue her dream of becoming an astronaut. She had no intention of loving diving!

Dr Laura Walton 

Facing diver panic to open opportunities for wider prevention......10:00-10:50 Hall 2

Dr Laura Walton is a Clinical Psychologist, specialising in Diving Psychology; and a Scuba Diving Instructor. Her perspectives on stress, anxiety and panic in diving arise from knowledge of psychological theory, clinical practice and informal observation of diver behaviour.

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