Neil Schnaak has more than 30 years of experience leading safety culture transformation and organizational change initiatives across transportation, energy, utilities, manufacturing, and healthcare industries. His background includes senior executive roles in aviation—an industry renowned for its rigorous approach to managing low-frequency, high-consequence risk—giving him a distinctive perspective he now applies to help organizations across all sectors prevent serious injuries and fatalities.

• Neil has led large, complex client engagements with Fortune 500 companies including PG&E, BNSF Railway, CSX Railroad, International Paper, Canadian National Railway, and BAE Shipbuilding. His work focuses on safety leadership development, Human and Organizational Performance (HOP), Serious Injury and Fatality (SIF) prevention, and Event Learning implementation. He has coached executives and frontline leaders alike to build sustainable safety cultures that drive measurable improvement.
• Neil’s expertise in high-reliability operations includes serving as Managing Director of Safety and Security at Hawaiian Airlines, where he led safety, security, emergency response, and regulatory compliance programs supporting more than 95,000 annual flight operations and 7,500 employees. This experience reinforced his understanding of how disciplined systems, engaged leadership, and organizational learning work together to manage complex risk.
• As a Senior Consultant for Booz Allen Hamilton, Neil supported the FAA in developing next-generation safety oversight systems and served as an aviation subject matter expert for federal law enforcement initiatives. He has contributed to safety research through the U.S. DOT Volpe Center and has presented at national conferences on root cause analysis, organizational learning, and fatigue risk management.
• Neil has served in industry leadership roles including Chairman of the Airlines for America Safety Council, where he facilitated collaboration among major carriers on emerging safety challenges. Earlier in his career, he was instrumental in establishing Atlanta’s first LifeFlight critical care transport service, bridging healthcare and transportation, an early example of his ability to drive safety improvement across industry boundaries.

Neil earned a Bachelor of Science from Georgia State University and completed the Aviation Safety Program Management program at the University of Southern California. He holds an Airline Transport Pilot certificate with over 8,000 flight hours—credentials that underscore his hands-on understanding of operational risk. Neil is a sought-after speaker on safety leadership, organizational culture transformation, and Human and Organizational Performance.