2024 Meritorious Achievement Awardee

The Meritorious Achievement Award is given to members of ACGIH who have made outstanding, long-term contributions to the field of occupational health and environmental hygiene. The recipient of the 2023 Meritorious Achievement Award is Nancy Wilk, HBSc, MHSc, CIH.

Nancy is an Environmental Health and Safety Fellow with WSP Canada Inc., Mine Water & Environment located in Cambridge, Ontario (Canada) with extensive experience in EHS and the comprehensive practice of occupational hygiene since 1986.  Nancy is a Certified Industrial Hygienist (CIH) with the Board for Global EHS Credentialing. Nancy has a Master of Health Science degree specializing in Occupational Hygiene from the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Toronto. Nancy has more than 37 years of experience in delivering EHS services including strategic advisory services, management system development, risk assessment, compliance assessments, industrial hygiene program development and review, workplace inspections and audits, and litigation support.

Early in her career, from 1987 to 1997, Nancy served as a provincial offences officer with the Ontario Ministry of Labour conducting investigations and inspections across all sectors. During her tenure with the province of Ontario, she managed and led the Information Coordination Unit, on behalf of the Deputy Minister for Labour, daily organizing information related to health, safety, employment standards, and workers compensation policies and events and briefing the Minister of Labour on these matters. For most of her career, Nancy has provided occupational and environmental health and safety (OEHS) and occupational hygiene services to a variety of sectors including mining, manufacturing, construction, health care, education, municipal, retail, pharmaceutical, food, energy, and power generation.  As a provincial enforcement officer and later as a consultant, she served the mining industry in mine exploration, operations, processing, care and maintenance, and mine remediation across North and South America, Asia Pacific, Africa, and Kazakhstan. This has included coal, extractive metallurgy such as nickel, iron ore, gold, rare earth elements, and palladium, gypsum mineral mining, and aggregate extraction. Nancy was Golder Associates Corporation Global Vice President of HSSE from 2012 to 2018 leading, working with, and supporting teams representing over 7500 employees around the globe. As Global VP HSSE Nancy developed, introduced and led the implementation of a global approach to critical control management and fatality and SIF prevention, visible felt leadership, and the global participation in the established mental health initiative RUOK? Day.

Nancy is the 2024/2025 President and Board Director for IOHA (International Occupational Hygiene Association) on behalf of ACGIH (American Conference of Governmental Industrial Hygienists). Nancy is the immediate past Chair of the AIHA Total Worker Health^® Advisory Group. In 2023, CIM (Canadian Institute of Mining, Metallurgy and Petroleum) awarded Nancy with a CIM Distinguished Lecturer Award for her work on raising awareness of chronic non-communicable occupational disease prevention and advancing worker well-being in the mining sector. In 2022, AIHA awarded Nancy with the Aileen Yankowski Outstanding Leader of the Year Award. Nancy is past-Director and past-Treasurer on the ACGIH Board of Directors (2019 to 2021). She is a Past-President (2013-2014) and Past-Board Director of OHAO (Occupational Hygiene Association of Ontario). In 2020, OHAO awarded Nancy with the Hugh Nelson Award of Excellence in Occupational Hygiene.

Nancy has enjoyed coaching and mentoring other industrial hygienists and OEHS professionals throughout her career and continues to do so locally, nationally, and around the globe. She resides in Ontario Canada with her husband of 40 years, Terry. Together, they keep honeybees and free-range chickens, garden, and sustainably manage the naturalization of forest and wetlands within their farm acreage.