At this year’s AIChE Annual Meeting and Annual Student Conference, attendees will have the chance to experience The SAFE Leader® Workshop for the first time. This CPD Certified program is designed to help engineers strengthen their leadership skills and foster more inclusive, collaborative environments.
Created by Mark McBride-Wright, Founder and CEO of EqualEngineers, the SAFE (Share, Act, Feel, Empower) model blends technical rigor with human connection, giving engineers a practical framework to lead with confidence, empathy, and purpose.
We spoke with Mark about what inspired The SAFE Leader, how the model helps engineers think differently about leadership, and what attendees can expect from this year’s workshops.
What inspired you to create The SAFE Leader, and why is now the right time to bring it to AIChE?
The inspiration for The SAFE Leader came from my own journey as a safety engineer. Over the years, I noticed something powerful: when engineers talk about safety, they usually think about process safety, risk assessments, or regulatory compliance. But the cultural and human dimensions of safety – the ability to speak up, to challenge, to be heard – were often missing.
I created SAFE (Share, Act, Feel, Empower) to give leaders and engineers a practical framework to strengthen psychological safety and inclusion in technical environments. The model emerged from years of work at the intersection of safety and diversity, equity, and inclusion, and from conversations with engineers who felt unheard or unseen in their workplaces.
Bringing this to AIChE now feels timely. We’re facing complex challenges — from the energy transition to new technologies — and we need leaders who can unlock every voice in the room. Engineering progress depends on trust, openness, and collaboration. SAFE equips people to lead with that mindset.
How does the SAFE model help chemical engineers think differently about leadership?
Chemical engineers are trained to solve problems, optimize systems, and eliminate failure. SAFE reframes leadership as part of that same discipline.
- Share encourages leaders to tell their own stories and invite others to do the same.
- Act focuses on creating visible, consistent behaviors that build trust.
- Feel centers empathy and emotional intelligence — areas we often underplay in engineering.
- Empower is about creating conditions where others can thrive and contribute fully.
I have not simply created more “soft skills” training — it’s about making safety and inclusion inseparable from technical excellence. By using a structured model, chemical engineers can approach culture-building with the same rigor they bring to process safety.
Why are safety, inclusion, and innovation so important for advancing the chemical engineering industry?
Innovation doesn’t happen in silence. The most ground-breaking solutions come from environments where people feel safe to question, challenge, and experiment.
Safety is the foundation of our industry, but inclusion amplifies it. When diverse voices are heard and valued, we spot risks earlier, design better solutions, and build more resilient systems. As well as being a moral argument, it’s a performance and safety imperative too.
The chemical engineering sector is at an important moment. Decarbonization, digitalization, and workforce change require us to bring everyone into the conversation. Creating cultures that foster inclusion is essential for sustaining innovation and ensuring safe outcomes.
What do you hope attendees will take away from the workshop, and how do you see it impacting them moving forward?
I want attendees to walk away with a practical toolkit they can apply immediately, not just inspiration.
They’ll leave understanding their own leadership story more deeply, with tangible actions to build trust and inclusion in their teams and organizations. My hope is that students and professionals alike will see themselves as active shapers of safety culture, not passive recipients of rules and procedures.
If one person leaves feeling more empowered to speak up, listen differently, or lead with more humanity, then we’ve made progress.
Learn more about the SAFE Leader Workshops at Annual and ASC.
Learn more and register for the 2025 AIChE Annual Meeting (November 2–6, Boston, MA).
Explore the 2025 AIChE Annual Student Conference (October 31–November 3).
