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Schooling: Dan Zahlis is a native of the San Joaquin Valley of California. He is a graduate of California State University Fresno with a Bachelor's of Science degree in Health Science, Occupational Safety and Health. He went on to attend McGeorge School of Law where he left before it was too late!
Education: Zahlis gained an appreciation for the perspective of the 'front line' while performing a variety of jobs. He worked as a plumber's assistant, boiler repair assistant, retail sales, dredged for gold in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountains, and spent summers in Alaska 'sliming' salmon, and operating a forklift on a Bering Sea barge.
Learning: Zahlis began his career in occupational safety with Chemical Waste Management, Inc. where he worked as a safety engineer and eventually assumed responsibility for the safety and health of the nation's second largest hazardous waste treatment, storage and disposal facility. He went on to work with Dole Food Company and The Haagen-Dazs Company where he gained valuable insights regarding organizational performance, strategic change, and the importance of measurement systems, which encourage frequency (reporting) as a means of decreasing severity (cost). He went on to form and lead Emprise, Inc., an independent risk management-consulting firm. With Emprise, Zahlis was successful in securing contracts with companies such as Pirelli Tire, Ruiz Food Products and Dreyer's Grand Ice Cream where he designed and launched the ice cream manufacturer's national risk management program.
The 'Parallel Universe:' Beginning in 1995, Zahlis began to author articles on functional integration, operational cost control, pre-emption of risk, and mitigation of loss. Zahlis participates in international Web casts and conducts presentations around the United States on the subject of operational risk control. In 1996, he received the American Society of Safety Engineers' - Veteran's of Safety, Professional Paper award for his work,
CAUTION, Beware of OSHA Statistics . ARCO refineries and the U.S. Paper Industry republished this article. Federal OSHA has cited and included 'CAUTION' as a user resource on the agency's Internet website.
In 1998, Zahlis' article,
The Hidden Agenda was selected as 'Cover/Feature' of Professional Safety, The Journal of the American Society of Safety Engineers. The Hidden Agenda exposes the performance deficiencies and sub-optimization which results from disparate management practices, and comprises the basis of Active Agenda, an Internet based 'Risk Management Operating System' designed to help companies collaborate, preempt risk, minimize loss, and significantly reduce their 'total cost of risk.'
In 2005, Zahlis co-authored (with co-founder Hansen) another 'Cover/Feature' for Professional Safety titled
Beware the Disconnect. "The Disconnect" was written as a follow-up to "CAUTION, Beware of OSHA Statistics" and provides an explanation for the counter-intuitive phenomenon of increasing claims costs and decreasing injury frequency rates - a phenomenon predicted ten years ago within CAUTION..
In 1995, Zahlis began to focus his efforts to bring Active Agenda to the marketplace as a means of automating operational risk control, and changing the way industry approaches risk measurement and management. Active Agenda leverages today's technologies to help companies mine upstream data ('CAUTION') and streamline the process of risk administration ('The Hidden Agenda').
The Career 'Change': Starting in 1995, Zahlis has been involved in the development, refinement, and improvement of Active Agenda, the development of business alliances with leaders in the risk, safety, and technology domains, and the pursuit of sponsors and charter client alliances to bring Active Agenda to the global marketplace as a "free" (open source) solution in 2006.
In October 2006, Penton Media published "
A Solution (R)evolution" in Occupational Hazards Magazine. "A Solution (R)evolution" is a "softened" version of Zahlis' first hand experiences during his eleven year effort to introduce innovation into the risk and safety industry. "Occupational Hazards" continues its bold support for the Active Agenda mission by publishing a monthly column about one module of the Active Agenda project each month.
