2026 Leadership-in-Action Award Recipient
Mary Lepa
Senior Direction EHS Engineering and CollaborationMicrosoft
Award Category: Championing Technology Innovation
Mary Lepa, Senior Director of EHS Engineering & Collaboration Services at Microsoft, was nominated for the NAEM Excellence Awards’ Leadership in Action – Championing Technology Innovation category in recognition of her 13 years of EHS&S leadership and her role in architecting and leading Microsoft’s global EHS&S digital transformation.
Drawing on experience at Microsoft and nine years at ExxonMobil managing EHS systems in highly regulated, high-hazard environments, Lepa has led the development of Microsoft’s enterprise-wide Enablon program to support its rapidly expanding global datacenter footprint. Under her leadership, Microsoft has implemented an extensive suite of integrated capabilities spanning health and safety, permit to work, EHS risk, environmental compliance, sustainability and ESG, assurance, chemical management, mobility, and enterprise integrations. The initiative established a unified source of EHS&S data, standardized global processes while accommodating local regulatory requirements, enabled mobile-first workflows for frontline employees, improved leadership access to consistent and reliable performance information, and created a scalable foundation capable of supporting continued datacenter and AI-driven growth without proportionally increasing EHS overhead. As the program’s executive owner and architect, Lepa defines its strategy and multi-year roadmap, leads a multidisciplinary global team, aligns stakeholders across construction, operations, security, sustainability, legal, IT, and procurement, and champions sustained executive investment.
Her operational-capability approach measures success by safer workers, cleaner operations, stronger risk management, and better data rather than technology deployment alone, helping reposition EHS at Microsoft from a back-office function to a digitally enabled strategic capability that supports operational excellence, environmental stewardship, sustainability commitments, and enterprise decision-making.