Tatiana Costa, Director of Environment, Health and Safety at Shehadey Family Foods, goes beyond ensuring compliance across manufacturing facilities and distribution centers. While managing audits and frontline operations, she drives enterprise-wide safety programs, implements forward-looking regulatory strategies, while fostering a culture of accountability. Through training, proactive engagement with federal and state agencies, she empowers teams to work safely and sustainably.
Recognizing Costa’s leadership in advancing sustainable and safe industrial operations, this interview explores how her focus on environmental compliance and proactive technology empowers teams and turns regulatory challenges into opportunities for long-term operational excellence.
AT A GLANCE:
• Culture Drives Safety – A healthy, engaged workforce isthe foundation of a safe workplace, where employees take ownership and proactively address risks.
• Technology Enables Leadership – Integrated platforms for incident tracking, audits and observations turn data into actionable insights, reinforcing
accountability and transparency across operations.
• Sustainability Requires Strategy – Balancing efficiency and environmental stewardship ensures long-term resilience and responsible industrial growth.
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Meeting New Industry Demands: Balancing Environmental Compliance with Efficiency
When regulatory changes first arrived on my desk, they felt less like guidelines and more like roadblocks. Yet with experience, I came to understand that they are markers pointing toward smarter and more resilient ways of working. For instance, the CARB requirements initially appeared as a compliance exercise, but they became the catalyst for route optimization. What began as a legal necessity soon evolved into a strategic tool, cutting fuel consumption, reducing idle time and sharpening efficiency across our trucking fleet.
Electrification, however, presented a different challenge altogether. The ambition of policy far outpaced the readiness of infrastructure, creating a gap that could have easily stalled progress. Standing still was not an option. Instead, we introduced interim solutions that allowed us to move forward with what we could control. That same forward-looking perspective guided our decisions around boiler replacements in California, where we discovered that environmental compliance and financial prudence converge when viewed through a long-term investment lens.
Technology adoption added yet another dimension of learning. Implementing new digital safety tools revealed a cultural divide within the workforce. Younger employees embraced these platforms with ease, while seasoned team members needed reassurance that virtual training complemented, rather than replaced, the hands-on experience they valued. Bridging these perspectives became as important as enforcing systems. It was a reminder that leadership in safety is not only about technology, but also about respecting the values of different generations and guiding them toward a common culture of trust.
True progress begins with anticipation. By embedding sustainability into long-term planning, we stop treating compliance as a burden and begin treating it as a catalyst for innovation.
The leadership lesson from these experiences is that compliance is no longer a defensive mechanism. It is a blueprint for competitive advantage. Organizations that adopt this mindset move from reacting to regulations to leveraging them as a platform for excellence.
Leading Through Technology: Integrated Platforms Reinforce Transparency
One of the most transformative steps we have taken is implementing a unified software platform. Previously, audits, incident reports and work observations existed in silos, scattered across different systems and difficult to connect. By bringing them together into one consolidated platform, we created a single source of truth. Now, every data point, whether drawn from a positive observation or a near miss, feeds into an organization-wide system that is transparent and accessible.
This shift has had an impact far greater than streamlining workflow. It has fundamentally changed how we see and manage risk. With visibility into both leading and lagging indicators, this platform can anticipate and address potential issues before they mature into problems. Every entry is visible, traceable and actionable, reinforcing accountability at every level. Efficiency improved, but perhaps more importantly, so did trust. Transparency across the system, built confidence, turning data into a shared resource that strengthens responsibility across teams.
Predicting Change: Turning Stricter Regulations into Opportunities
Environmental regulations show no sign of easing. On the contrary, each passing year brings greater stringency, and reacting late is no longer an option. True progress begins with anticipation. By embedding sustainability into long-term planning, we stop treating compliance as a burden and begin treating it as a catalyst for innovation.
This shift in perspective also deepens our sense of responsibility to the communities we serve. Regulations may define the minimum expectations, but leadership requires more. It calls for designing systems where profitability and responsibility reinforce each other. It calls for acknowledging that compliance is not the ceiling, but the foundation for building better ways of operating.
Constraints, in this context, can be unexpectedly creative. Treating regulation as a design parameter compels us to innovate in directions we might not otherwise explore. It is in those moments that organizations discover breakthroughs—solutions that strengthen resilience, unlock efficiency and elevate environmental stewardship. The future, I believe, will belong to those who embrace compliance not as a limit but as an opening, a starting point for long-term opportunity.
Key Advice: Embed Safety in Organizational Values
If there’s one lesson I would pass forward, it’s that culture beats procedure. I discovered that frontline employees notice risks first but only share them when they feel their voices matter. When leaders listen with curiosity instead of assumption, those conversations transform outcomes.
Policies set the stage, but culture drives the performance. A workplace where people feel respected and empowered naturally produces safe behaviors. Safety then becomes personal, not imposed.
Looking ahead, the strongest organizations will be those where safety is inseparable from values. Compliance becomes instinctive when employees view it as part of their identity, not just a task they must perform. In such cultures, safety moves from a checklist to a living practice, shaping performance and identity.
