The landscape of the health and fitness industry is constantly evolving, so are the challenges faced by the health and fitness professionals to maintain the balance between strategic and operational priorities to continue to meet the goals of their clients. Therefore, risk management has become an essential element in all aspects of businesses to identify and minimise the risks to the success of their objectives.

In line with the government`s preventive health policies and an increasingly health conscious society, the health and fitness industry has been blooming. However, many fitness businesses operating in the industry are small sized and finding the time and resources to keep abreast of risk management requirements can be challenging.

Fitness Industry Risk Management Consulting (FIRMC®) was founded by Dr Betul Sekendiz in 2016 with the aim to offer approachable consultancy services to health and fitness businesses to help them develop risk management programs that can meet their unique organisational goals and needs.

Dr Betul Sekendiz obtained her PhD from Bond University, specialising in risk management and minimisation of legal liability in the health and fitness industry. Her doctoral research was a catalyst for the Australian Fitness Industry Risk Management (AFIRM) Project (LP120100275) which was a Linkage Project funded by the Australian Research Council and industry partners AusActive (formerly Fitness Australia) and Sports Medicine Australia. Sekendiz is an internationally recognised thought leader in the health and fitness industry having published and presented extensively addressing complex legal and safety risk management issues with practical simplicity. Her advocacy for risk management reflects on her experience in the industry as an educator, professional and competitive bodybuilder. Sekendiz has been an expert witness on high profile legal liability cases in Australia and is the Chairperson of the Health & Fitness Industry Standards Council. Sekendiz provides independent expert advice to AusActive in the development and review of a suite of standards, codes, guidance materials and quality assurance schemes.