Dee Mason, Founder/CEO
Dee Mason is relied upon to justify feasibility and provide development, technical assistance and trouble-shooting to entities ranging from local municipalities and state agencies to large private sector development entities, with and without federal mandates, with and without unions. Dee serves as technical advisor for the Ohio Bureau of Workers' Compensation (OBWC) DFWP Program and for the Ohio Department of Alcohol and Drug Addiction Services (ODADAS) on DFWP Program issues.
Constantly monitoring the legal, legislative and professional issues impacting drug/substance-free workplace programs (DFWP), Dee is recognized for her expertise and often called upon to assist government agencies. In 1997, she served as the facilitator of the statewide task force to develop specifications for the Ohio Bureau of Workers' Compensation's DFWP Discount Rule (which has the most substantial workers' compensation discounts in the nation). She wrote the Bureau's technical assistance manual and provided training on the issues to their initial 150 assigned personnel.
In 1996 the Ohio Legislative Budget Office requested Dee's input as it analyzed the financial impact that could result from Ohio's proposed H.B. 660 (Rebuttable Presumption). This was later introduced in Senate Bill 45, H.B. 122 and as H.B. 223. In 1992 she drafted the original plan which won Ohio one out of eight positions for national recognition by the President's Drug Advisory Council, and which resulted in the award of the U.S. Department of Labor's database pilot program for the state of Ohio. Ohio is one of a very few states who test their employees for drugs (a rarity amongst states because of the complications caused by constitutional protections provided to state employees). In 1993, Dee developed and administered drug testing guidelines and training-of-trainers (TOT) for all government departments within the state of Ohio, impacting over 60,000 state employees.
Ms. Mason served as the drug-free workplace development consultant and accountability and compliance officer to the Nationwide Arena and District Construction Project, a "wrap-up" or owner-controlled-insurance-project (OCIP). As a two year, multi-million dollar project with over 1.5 million man-hours, over 112 different contractors from across the United States, drug-free efforts of the arena-portion of this project are credited with keeping a pay-out of under $400,000 for accidents and workers' compensation - the amount budgeted was $2,000,000 with a cap of $5,000,000.
Dee's work has gained national attention from leaders at the Department of Labor (DoL), Office of National Drug Control Strategy (ONDCP), Small Business Administration (SBA), Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS), The Institute for a Drug-Free Workplace (102 member organization comprised of seven out of America's ten largest companies, twenty-four of the Fortune 50 and eighty of the Fortune 200), Employee Assistance Professionals Association (EAPA), and more.
