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Jessi Hopkins

Highway Safety Specialist, Occupant Protection Division
Board Member company since 1994

Jessi Hopkins is a Highway Safety Specialist in the Office of Impaired Driving and Occupant Protection at the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), U.S. Department of Transportation.

Ms. Hopkins started her career with NHTSA’s Regional Operations and Program Delivery (ROPD) office, overseeing the State of Michigan’s highway safety plan development, implementation, and evaluation. She served as the NHTSA regional point of contact for impaired driving, autonomous vehicles, law enforcement services, vehicle recalls, and data evaluation.

Prior to NHTSA, she worked as the State of Illinois’ Occupant Protection Coordinator. Her duties with the State Highway Safety Office included coordinating the state’s Child Passenger Safety (CPS) program, administering grants, certification and continuing education for more than 1,800 CPS technicians. She also coordinated messaging, media and grant-funded traffic enforcement for safety campaigns like Click It or Ticket and Drive Sober or Get Pulled Over.

Ms. Hopkins’ seventeen years of traffic safety experience has included work developing and managing a statewide teen safe driving initiative, distracted driving awareness campaign, and child passenger safety (CPS) emergency identification program. She served on the Illinois CPS Advisory Board, the Secretary’s Fatality Reduction Task Force, and various Strategic Highway Safety Plan working groups, including distracted driving, young driver, unrestrained occupant and impaired driving.

Ms. Hopkins is currently pursuing her MBA and holds a bachelor’s degree in elementary education from Western Illinois University. She is an instructor for the Safe Kids Worldwide CPS Technician certification program and NHTSA’s Child Safety Restraint Systems on School Buses curriculum.

She lives in south suburban Chicago with her husband and son Ben where they enjoy hiking, biking, and gardening.

National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health

Kyla Hagan-Haynes

Director, NIOSH Center for Motor Vehicle Safety 
Board Member company since 1996

Kyla Hagan-Haynes is the Director, Center for Motor Vehicle Safety at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention – National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH).  She is the NIOSH federal liaison to NETS. In her years at NIOSH, she has delivered over 40 professional presentations and published multiple scientific papers, book chapters, videos, hazard alerts, conference proceedings papers, and surveillance reports on various oil and gas extraction safety and health topics, including motor vehicle safety. Kyla leads the National Occupational Research Agenda (NORA) Oil and Gas Sector Council Motor Vehicle Workgroup, a group that develops products about motor vehicle safety for the industry. Kyla is the Assistant Coordinator for NIOSH’s Center for Motor Vehicle Safety and coordinates an industry/government workgroup that develops products about motor vehicle safety for the industry. Kyla also oversees the Fatalities in Oil and Gas Database (FOG) which collects detailed information about worker fatalities in the oil and gas extraction industry. This database has been used to identify and raise awareness about emerging and ongoing safety and health hazards for oilfield workers nationally. She has a Master’s in Public Health from the University of North Texas. Prior to her work at NIOSH, Kyla worked for many years as an injury prevention specialist and epidemiologist in Alaska. She is a native Texan but is currently based in Denver, Colorado.