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Glen Cook, or “Cookie”, as he is affectionately known around the world, is incredibly passionate about powerline safety. Just have one conversation with Cookie and you won’t be able to forget it. He is energetic and imaginative, creative and bold. He does not shy away from important issues and focuses on messaging that will help keep people who work and live around power lines safe. He is a Powerline Safety Specialist with previous experience working as a lineman for Energy Queensland.
Cookie began with the vision for his home country, Australia’s, “Look Up and Live” application. He worked with technical specialists who had GIS expertise to help turn his ideas into reality. He petitioned for support from upper management and before long, “Look Up and Live” was in production. It garnered so much excitement and success around Australia, that it evolved into a public safety program. Naturally, as the spokesperson for the application, Cookie has also become the go-to guy for the entire program. He travels around Australia speaking to various groups about how to stay safe when working around power lines as well as how to help keep the public safe during disaster response efforts, storm outages, or other powerline related circumstances. His online presence is impactful as well; he posts to both LinkedIn and YouTube regularly with safety content.
When he isn’t zipping around Australia, he enjoys playing the guitar and ukulele, covering a wide variety of musical genres. He even created a parody cover song for the safety program called “They Didn’t See The Wire” based on a Billy Joel hit.
Cookie is an international public speaker and has won multiple awards for both the “Look Up and Live” application and his efforts in the safety field. He is the Director of Australia’s Before You Dig Board and serves on multiple committees focused on safety and education in Australia.
I enjoyed my conversation with Cookie so much. I first met him in 2019 at a conference in Atlanta, Georgia and we had a super fun conversation. It stuck with me and I’ve followed him on social media ever since. I feel strongly that the “Look Up and Live” safety program is worthy of attention and I was confident that he would bring an interesting conversation to the podcast listeners. After all, it isn’t every day that you start a conversation where your guest says “G’day from tomorrow!”.
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