The 2026 Discover! conference brought Environmental Health and Safety (EHS) professionals from across the country to the historic Fort Worth Stockyards for three days of focused learning, peer exchange, and hands-on platform training. From AI-powered compliance tools to influence-based safety leadership, the sessions reflected both the breadth of challenges EHS teams face and the practical strategies available to address them.
Here is a look at what we covered.
Streamlining Site-Level Compliance
Eric Lundy, Environmental Compliance Supervisor at American Crystal Sugar, opened the conference with a detailed account of how Dakota’s Services team helped him use Profiler to achieve measurable compliance improvements across multiple facilities. His session illustrated how a structured implementation approach translates directly into operational results.
Dakota also introduced the AI-powered Permit Analyzer—a new capability that processes complex environmental permits and converts them into prioritized, actionable tasks. For EHS teams managing multi-site permit obligations, this represents a meaningful reduction in manual interpretation work. View slides
Empowering Teams Through EHS Knowledge
Taylor Murphy, Expert Services Lead at Enhesa, reviewed the most significant global regulatory trends EHS teams should monitor heading into 2026. Her session provided a structured view of the international enforcement landscape and its implications for compliance planning. View slides
Dakota followed with a demonstration of how clients can bring together Enhesa’s international regulatory coverage with Dakota’s deep U.S. regulatory intelligence in a single platform—enabling centralized oversight of global compliance obligations without duplicating workflows. View slides
Craig Schwarze, President and Director of Training at Aarcher Institute, then addressed how advanced EHS training builds regulatory expertise, reduces operational risk, and strengthens an organization’s compliance posture over time. View slides
Dakota closed this track by showing how Profiler captures institutional knowledge and delivers clear, structured guidance for completing compliance tasks reliably—an important capability for organizations managing turnover or expanding their EHS teams. View slides
Creating Safer Workplaces Through Engagement
Award-winning safety speaker Skipper Kendrick delivered one of the conference’s most engaging sessions, exploring influence-based leadership as a framework for improving safety outcomes. His approach challenged conventional assumptions about what drives safe behavior and offered a practical model for building a culture where safety is owned at every level. View slides
Dakota then demonstrated the latest updates to its inspection and incident management products—tools designed to give both EHS leaders and frontline workers the data and workflows they need to act decisively and document outcomes effectively. View slides
Turning Engagement into Actionable Insights
Rob Doremus, Global Safety and Health Manager, and Duane Mummert, Global Environmental and Sustainability Manager, both from Ingevity, shared how they use Dakota Scout and Insights dashboards to standardize incident data, surface risk patterns, and deliver structured reporting to leadership across their global facilities.
Paul Bytheway, Environmental Engineer at Schreiber Foods, outlined the key performance indicators that anchor his day-to-day EHS programs—offering a practical framework other practitioners can apply to their own organizations.
Chris Corcoran, VP of Environmental, Health, and Safety at Jefferson Energy, discussed how Insights dashboards enable him to track compliance status and manage risk exposure across operations.
Charting the Road Ahead: Dakota Product Roadmap
Dakota’s leadership team closed the main conference sessions with a forward-looking presentation on recent platform enhancements and the next generation of the Dakota platform. The demonstration highlighted how Dakota’s regulatory intelligence and analytical capabilities are converging into a unified Risk Operating System—designed to give EHS teams and executive leadership a single, integrated view of compliance and operational risk.
Training Tracks
To support clients at every level, Discover! 2026 offered three dedicated training tracks covering core workflows and best practices.
Elevate: Leadership and Culture
Sessions in this track covered incident and corrective action management, inspection execution, effective CAPA (Corrective and Preventive Action) programs, proactive safety culture development, and Dakota’s new Incident Management Platform.
Navigate: Compliance and Risk
This track focused on building site profiles, creating compliance plans, conducting audits, and advanced Auditor and Profiler workflows.
Optimize: EHS Operations
Attendees in this track explored Insights and analytics, alert and communication management, data health best practices, effective task writing, and adoption strategies for scaling EHS programs across the organization.
Thank You
Discover! 2026 was shaped by the EHS professionals who shared their programs, their challenges, and their results. Thank you to our speakers, Eric Lundy, Rob Doremus, Duane Mummert, Paul Bytheway, Chris Corcoran, Skipper Kendrick, Taylor Murphy, and Craig Schwarze, as well as our partners at Enhesa and Aarcher Consulting.
We look forward to continuing these conversations with clients throughout the year.
