Reflecting back on the Health & Safety Excellence Awards 2026, held last 30th April at the Crowne Plaza Hotel, Santry, the Rising Star of the Year award went to Izabela Malnowicz of Primeline Group, in recognition of a health and safety journey that is as much a story of personal leadership development as it is of organisational safety improvement.

Izabela's path to the Rising Star of the Year recognition began on the warehouse floor. Having started her career with Primeline Group as a warehouse operative, she developed a ground-level understanding of the risks, pressures, and daily realities of logistics operations that most health and safety professionals never acquire. That foundation has shaped everything about her approach to safety leadership, giving her both the credibility to engage frontline colleagues meaningfully and the practical insight to design safety interventions that work in real operational conditions rather than just on paper.

Her progression to Health and Safety leader across 12 warehouse sites is a significant operational responsibility at any career stage. Across that footprint, Izabela has delivered measurable safety improvements through structured training, proactive engagement, and a communications approach that reflects the linguistic diversity of the workforce she serves. Multilingual risk communication is not a peripheral feature of her safety programme but a central pillar, ensuring that safety information reaches every colleague in a form they can fully understand, regardless of their first language. In a logistics environment with a diverse workforce, that commitment to inclusive safety communication is both a practical necessity and a genuine expression of people-first leadership.

The results across Primeline Group's warehouse network speak to the quality of that leadership. Safety culture has strengthened measurably across the sites she manages, audit performance has improved, and the working environment for a diverse, frontline workforce has become demonstrably safer. Those outcomes reflect the disciplined, proactive approach to occupational health and safety that the Health & Safety Excellence Awards Rising Star category exists to recognise.

The judging panel's decision to award Izabela Malnowicz the Rising Star of the Year reflects a simple and compelling truth: the most effective safety leaders often come from within the communities they protect.

Stay tuned for the Health & Safety Excellence Awards 2027 cycle, where organisations from across Ireland will once again have the opportunity to showcase their commitment to workplace health and safety excellence.

View the full list of winners at www.hsawards.ie/shortlist, and subscribe to the newsletter to stay informed on future award cycles and industry news.