Dan Brackett
Dan is passionate about transforming the food safety culture in the organizations of food processor and retailers to ensure consumer and brand protection. His philosophy on food safety and risk management is that “due diligence is a moving target” and therefore a company’s food safety culture must be transformed to take beyond compliance.
Background
Dan Brackett was born and grew up in the Central American country of Belize. He emigrated to the Orange County, California as a teen to complete his college education. Growing up in Belize provided Dan with a great appreciation for cultural diversity, while his time spent in Orange Country instilled in him the values of a strong work ethic and personal continuous improvement.
Dan attended Chapman University where he graduated with a degree in Food Science and later returned to graduate school for a Master’s Degree in Organizational Development. He has extensive knowledge of food safety and organizational culture and has held various senior management positions with prominent food manufacturing and food retail companies.
Currently, Dan works with clients as a business coach assisting with the development of World Class food safety programs for brand protection and continuous improvement.
Food Safety Culture
Dan’s career in food safety has allowed him to experience programs implementation and management from strategic, tactical and operational perspectives. In his experience working with food processing companies, he observed that most of the food programs were either poorly implemented or maintained as a result of and ineffective food safety culture. His observations are very much in line with regulatory agencies, which have stated that one of the leading causes of foodborne illnesses is the lack of a food safety culture in food manufacturing and retail companies. It was this observation that led him to return to graduate school to learn skills in change management, organizational development and leadership. Using this knowledge of organizational culture in the implementation of food safety programs and risk mitigation, he has developed a new methodology for the implementation and maintenance of food safety programs for clients.
Another one of Dan’s observation from his years working in the food industry is what he calls the Due Diligence Gap. Many companies are focused on complying with regulatory and customers’ requirements that they neglect to perform the due diligence on their operations to ensure effective protection of their brand’s integrity and equity. This focus on food safety compliance has resulted in companies having a false sense of security regarding their programs. In addressing this due diligence gap, Dan’s approach to food safety is described as an Integrated Risk Management (IRM) approach to protecting a company’s consumers and ultimately their brand.
Dan is a certified SQF Consultant and Six Sigma Practitioner and is available for coaching, training and public speaking as it relates to food safety culture and food safety programs implementation.
Personal Life
Dan’s life was forever transformed the day he reluctantly attended his first Tony Robbins event in San Jose, California. As an entrepreneur, he was asked by a potential business investor to attend the event even before they could sit down to discuss business. He reluctantly went to his first Tony Robbins event and his life has “never been the same” since.
Dan is strong proponent of diversity and tolerance and enjoys traveling to expand on his knowledge of cultural diversity. One his projects is Vista180, which serves to increase the profile of positive diversity images in social media.
Dan currently lives in The East Bay area of Northern California. He enjoys spending time with his children, traveling, exercising, and listening to music and poetry.
What I Do
After spending years in the food industry implementing food safety and quality programs for various prominent food companies, I realized that a food safety culture is paramount for those programs to be effective. It is now a passion of mine to assist companies to implement and maintain a robust food safety culture in their organizations to enable effective protection of their consumers and brands.
