Our Leadership Team

Israel Noble

Business owners face a clear reality: safety gaps cost money, operational inefficiency drains margin, and compliance failures put everything at risk. Opus Safety and Performance Group exists to solve these problems — delivering measurable improvements in safety performance, operational efficiency, and regulatory readiness.

Israel Noble co-founded Opus after 25 years of leading safety programs, continuous improvement initiatives, and large-scale deployments across 2,000+ facilities. Clients engage Israel for the same disciplined, metrics-driven methodology he applied while directing a $210MM deployment portfolio at a Fortune 5 global logistics and technology company — where he developed safety initiatives reviewed at the U.S. congressional level and built pilot testing standard operating procedures (SOPs) from the ground up.

His operational background runs deep. As a Process Engineer Manager of Continuous Improvement, Israel mentored 68 emerging leaders through Six Sigma training and authored a continuous improvement curriculum adopted across operations. As General Manager at a Fortune 50 retailer, he ran a customer-facing operation spanning sales, merchandising, logistics, staffing, and community engagement — achieving benchmark engagement scores (96% favorable) and top 5% company-wide performance metrics.

Israel holds a Six Sigma Black Belt Certification, OSHA credentials, and ANAB/ServSafe certifications. He is a graduate of Liberty University and owns and operates a real estate LLC founded in 2021.

Headquartered in Charlotte, NC, Opus SPG serves clients across manufacturing, logistics and distribution, construction, healthcare, energy and utilities, and retail and food service. Israel brings direct experience in lean transformation, ergonomic risk reduction, OSHA compliance, cycle time optimization, and safety culture development.

Beyond his professional practice, Israel coaches youth sports and serves nonprofit organizations — extending the same leadership development principles to his local community.

Blake Hilgen

When workplace injuries drive up costs and operational inefficiencies limit performance, the solution starts with understanding how people and systems interact. Blake Hilgen brings that understanding to every engagement.

An Industrial and Systems Engineer with a Master of Science in Industrial and Systems Engineering and a graduate certificate in Occupational Safety and Ergonomics, Blake has spent more than six years designing human-centered solutions across manufacturing, logistics, and fulfillment environments. He has led ergonomics programs impacting more than 100,000 employees, reducing musculoskeletal disorder risks and delivering measurable improvements in safety performance and operational efficiency.

Blake has built programs from the ground up, led cross-functional teams, and served as a trusted expert consultant to business groups across North America — advising Directors of Operations and Workplace Health and Safety on the interventions that drive sustainable results.

His toolkit includes advanced ergonomic assessment, computer-aided design analysis, and broader safety engineering design, alongside Lean methodologies — applying rigorous engineering principles and data-driven decision-making to create workplaces where people perform at their best and go home safely.