New Safety Professional Wins Top Honors At Safety Olympics

Montana Technological University brought home the top prize at the 2024 Safety Olympics held at Southeastern Oklahoma State University in Durant, Oklahoma, in March.

The eight-person Safety Olympics team included Zoe Doherty, who will begin working full time as a Safety Professional at NorthWestern Energy after she graduates from Tech in May. Zoe currently works part time at NorthWestern, and interned with the company in 2023.

This was Montana Tech’s first time competing in the annual Safety Olympics.

“One of my classmates had interned with someone who had competed in the Safety Olympics in a previous year so they brought the idea to our staff who picked the team,” Zoe explained. “Before you graduate, we are enrolled into a senior project class, and the Safety, Health and Industrial Hygiene Department though this would be a new opportunity to prepare for the Safety Olympics and earn some course credits while doing so.”

The Safety Olympics consist of six events: safety Jeopardy, safety culture, hazard identification, safety training, innovative idea and incident investigation. Montana Tech took top marks in three of the six events.

“We came down from Montana, so it's our first time participating in the event and we had a blast,” said Associate Professor of Safety, Health, and Industrial Hygiene and team coach Lorri Birkenbuel. “We did not have a clue what the outcome was going to be, but at the end we ended up winning, which was amazing. All of the participants were great, all the competitions were great, and we had a great time.”

The event was also a great chance to network with safety professionals from different areas and establish connections, Zoe said.

“We received real-life feedback from people who have been in industry for a while,” she said. “This was a totally different classroom experience in the way we had to prepare for the competition.”

Intern with NorthWestern Energy

Zoe Doherty started her career at NorthWestern Energy as a summer intern.

Each summer NorthWestern hires numerous interns in areas across the company from business technology to safety and engineering to communications. Look for our summer internship job postings early each calendar year.

Learn more at NorthWesternEnergy.com/internships.