Board of Directors

Kathryn Correia

Kathryn Correia’s work using Lean methodology has successfully transformed health delivery models, with a goal to deliver the best patient-centered and compassionate care. She is an expert in developing and transforming healthcare systems to create greater value for customers and communities. With more than ten years’ experience teaching and leading Lean, Kathryn understands that taking on transformational change doesn’t happen by maintaining the status quo.

Correia was selected as President and CEO for HealthEast in 2012. An advocate for community health and well-being, she embraced the opportunity to help create a vision that would inspire the organization to see the future of health care through a new lens, thus was born “Optimal health and well-being for our patients, our communities and ourselves.” The HealthEast Vision serves to engage and motivate employees, physicians and communities alike.

An Ohio native, Correia received her undergraduate degree from Denison University in Granville, Ohio, and her Master’s degree in Health Administration from Ohio State University.  She previously served as president of Appleton Medical Center and Theda Clark Medical Center, and senior vice president of ThedaCare.

While at ThedaCare, she formed ThedaCare Physicians and served as that medical group’s executive leader.  Prior to joining ThedaCare, Correia was vice president for ambulatory care centers and administrative director for clinic operations at Geisinger Health System in Danville, Pennsylvania.

Her work using The Toyota Production System and other lean principles to transform health delivery models has been featured in several national publications including, Health Affairs.  While at ThedaCare, Kathryn’s work was published in Using a Positive Lens to Explore Social Change and Organizations, by Karen Golden-Biddle and Jane E. Dutton.

Correia serves on the Catalysis Board of Directors and sits on the Leadership Council for the Center for Lean Healthcare Research (Ohio State University/Fisher College of Business).

Correia is also has board member roles with the Minnesota Hospital Association Board member and the YMCA Greater Twin Cities.

Beth Daley Ullem

Beth Daley Ullem works with hospital leadership teams, hospital boards and healthcare industry leaders to develop and fund programs that reduce risk and improve patient safety and quality. She is a nationally recognized expert for creating initiatives aimed at decreasing preventable hospital errors and increasing the transparency of clinical outcomes.

In addition to her consulting efforts, she serves on the board and quality committee of ThedaCare. She also is on the National Patient Safety Foundation’s board of governors. Daley Ullem has worked on board education projects for Solutions for Patient Safety, a network of 81 pediatric hospitals, Harvard Medical School’s Institute of Professionalism of Ethical Practice, Center for Medical Simulation, National Patient Safety Foundation, and other leading healthcare institutions.

Daley Ullem has a professional background in higher education, management consulting and financial services. She is a former McKinsey consultant and DePaul University professor of strategy and management.

Orrest (Orry) J. Fiume

Orest (Orry) J. Fiume was Vice President of Finance and Administration and a Director of The Wiremold Company, West Hartford, CT, which gained international recognition as a leader in lean business management in “Lean Thinking,” by James P. Womack and Daniel T. Jones. Fiume was Wiremold’s chief financial officer from 1978 until his retirement in 2002.

Fiume led Wiremold’s conversion to lean accounting in 1991 and developed alternate management accounting systems that supported the company’s entire lean business efforts. He went on to install lean accounting at more than 20 Wiremold acquisitions. Fiume has studied lean production in both the U.S. and Japan and has been a guest speaker at numerous conferences around the world. In addition, he has taught workshops on management accounting in a lean business at the Lean Enterprise Institute, the TBM Institute, the University of Dayton Center for Competitive Change, MEP’s in many states, and numerous companies in North and South America, Europe and Asia.

He also has given workshops on Lean Leadership to senior executives at many companies. Orry was a member of a delegation to China to discuss U.S. financial management practices and is co-author of the 2004 Shingo Prize winning book “Real Numbers: Management Accounting in a Lean Organization.” He was also inducted as a Life Member of the Shingo Prize Academy, which has been referred to by Business Week as the Nobel Prize in manufacturing.

Fiume has a Master’s Degree in Management from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and a Bachelor’s Degree in Accounting from Fairfield University. He is a Certified Public Accountant, and a member of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants. He is also a member of Financial Executives International, where he is a past president of the Connecticut Valley Chapter, and serves on the Board of Directors of The Lean Enterprise Institute, the leader in Lean Thinking and Lean Education. He also is a Board member of a manufacturing company, a private equity firm and a Washington, DC theater company.

Mark Hallett

Mark Hallett, MD, MBOE, is chief operating officer for ThedaCare’s two Regional Medical Centers in Appleton and Neenah, Wisconsin. He combines 20 years of primary care and specialty practice experience with 10 years of experience in medical group leadership and the ThedaCare Improvement System (TIS), ThedaCare’s application of the Toyota Production System.

Dr. Hallett formerly served as chief clinical officer for ThedaCare from 2014-2015, and prior to that, co-led ThedaCare Physicians from 2008-2014. He also co-led ThedaCare Orthopedics Plus, ThedaCare’s multidisciplinary musculoskeletal group, from its TIS value stream design in 2005 to full implementation by 2008. In 2012, he earned a Master of Business Operational Excellence for Healthcare from the Fisher College of Business at the Ohio State University.

His experience and passion for translating Toyota Production System thinking to improve patient care has led to multiple conference and medical group presentations. Most recently, Dr. Hallett served as a panelist at the Institute of Medicine’s Engineering Optimal Health Care Scheduling in 2014 and as a presenter at the 2015 ABIM Foundation Forum: Bringing Culture into Focus.

George Koenigsaecker

George Koenigsaecker is a principal investor in several lean enterprises. In addition to the Center, Koenigsaecker is a Board Member of the Shingo Prize, the international award for “lean enterprises,” The Association of Manufacturing Excellence, Ariens Outdoor Power Equipment, Baird Capital Partners, Watlow Electric Corporation and Xaloy Incorporated. He also serves at the executive vice president and a board member at Simpler Consulting.

From 1992 until 1999, Koenigsaecker led the lean conversion of the HON Company, a $1.5 billion office furniture manufacturer. Under his leadership, the organization’s volume tripled and it was named by Industry Week Magazine as one of the “World’s Best Managed Companies.”

Prior to 1992, Koenigsaecker served as President of the Jacob’s Vehicle Equipment Company and Group President of the Tool Group with Danaher Corporation. Koenigsaecker’s lean conversion at Danaher is featured in the book “Lean Thinking” by Jim Womack and Dan Jones. In addition, Koenigsaecker has held senior management positions in finance, marketing and operations with Rockwell International and Deere & Company. He is a graduate of the Harvard Business School.

Arnold Milstein, MD

Arnold Milstein, MD is the medical director of the Pacific Business Group on Health (PBGH) and directs the Clinical Excellence Research Center at Stanford.

His work and publications focus on private and public sector health care purchasing strategy, clinical performance measurement and the psychology of clinical performance improvement.

Milstein co-founded both the Leapfrog Group and the Consumer-Purchaser Disclosure Project. He also heads performance measurement activities for both initiatives and is a MedPAC Commissioner. The New England Journal of Medicine’s series on employer- sponsored health insurance described him as a pioneer in efforts to advance quality of care. In 2005, he was selected for the highest annual award of the National Business Group on Health (NBGH), which cited his nationally distinguished innovation, results in health care cost reduction and quality gains. In 2006, he was elected to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences.

Arnold Milstein, MD

Michael Sachs

A noted healthcare industry strategist and visionary, Michael Sachs currently serves as the chairman and CEO of Sg2. Under his leadership, Sg2 analyzes the impact of changes in the business and technology of healthcare. Sg2’s goal is to continually scrutinize new technologies and business practices to keep its clients positioned for success in a rapidly changing healthcare industry.

Sachs is a frequent lecturer on the future of healthcare and the impact of business and technology changes on the delivery of care. He has made presentations to executive teams, boards of trustees, industry groups and physicians across the United States and abroad. Sachs also has contributed articles to journals and magazines, and as co-authored books and periodicals on healthcare.

Before founding Sg2, Sachs was the chairman of Sachs Group. Prior to forming Sachs Group, he was a consultant with Ernst and Whinney and with AT Kearney. Sachs also served on the management team of Hurley Medical Center. He received his Bachelor of Arts degree in science and Master of Science degree in public health from the University of Missouri-Columbia. He began his healthcare career working in the University of Missouri Medical Center’s emergency department.

John Shook

John Shook is recognized as a true sensei who enthusiastically shares his knowledge and insights within the Lean Community and with those who have not yet made the lean leap.

Shook learned about lean management while working for Toyota for nearly 11 years in Japan and the U.S., helping it transfer production, engineering, and management systems from Japan to NUMMI and subsequently to other operations around the world. While at Toyota’s headquarters, he became the company’s first American kacho (manager) in Japan.

In the U.S., Shook joined Toyota’s North American engineering, research and development center in Ann Arbor, MI, as general manager of administration and planning. His last position with Toyota was as senior American manager with the Toyota Supplier Support Center in Lexington, KY, assisting North American companies implement the Toyota Production System. As co-author of Learning to See, Shook helped introduce the world to value-stream mapping. John also co-authored Kaizen Express, a bi-lingual manual of the essential concepts and tools of the Toyota Production System. In his latest book, Managing to Learn, he describes the A3 management process at the heart of lean management and leadership.

Shook is an industrial anthropologist with a bachelor’s degree from the University of Tennessee, a master’s degree from the University of Hawaii, and is a graduate of the Japan-America Institute of Management Science. He is the former director of the University of Michigan, Japan Technological Management Program, and faculty of the university’s Department of Industrial and Operations Engineering.

He is the author of “Toyota’s Secret: The A3 Report”; Sloan Management Review, July 2010; “How to Change a Culture: Lessons from NUMMI”; Sloan Management Review, January 2010. Shook is a sought-after conference keynoter who has been interviewed on lean management by National Public Radio, Bloomberg News, The Wall Street Journal, and numerous trade publications.

Stephen Shortell, Ph.D., M.P.H., MBA

Blue Cross of California Distinguished Professor of Health Policy and Management and Professor of Organization Behavior at the School of Public Health and Haas School of Business at University of California-Berkeley.

Dean Stephen M. Shortell, Ph.D., M.P.H, MBA is the Blue Cross of California Distinguished Professor of Health Policy and Management and Professor of Organization Behavior at the School of Public Health and Haas School of Business at University of California-Berkeley. He is also Dean of the School of Public Health at Berkeley, and holds appointments in the Department of Sociology at UC-Berkeley and the Philip R. Lee Institute for Health Policy Research, UC-San Francisco.

Dr. Shortell received his undergraduate degree from University of Notre Dame, his Masters degree in public health from UCLA, and his Ph.D. in behavioral sciences from University of Chicago. During 2006-07 he was a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University.

A leading health care scholar, Dr. Shortell has received numerous awards for his research examining the performance of integrated delivery systems; the organizational factors associated with quality and outcomes of care; the development of effective hospital-physician relationships and the factors associated with the adoption of evidence-based processes for treating patients with chronic illness. He is an elected member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences; past President of Academy Health and past editor of Health Services Research. He serves on many advisory boards and committees interested in improving the performance of health care systems.

Jeffrey E. Thompson, MD

Jeffrey E. Thompson, MD, is chief executive officer and chairman of the boards of Gundersen Lutheran Health System, and a practicing pediatric intensivist and neonatologist. He is a founding member and past board chair of the Wisconsin Collaborative for Healthcare Quality. Presently, he is chairman of the board of the La Crosse Medical Health Science Consortium.

Since completing his professional training in 1984, Dr. Thompson has worked full time solely at Gundersen Clinic and Lutheran Hospital – La Crosse (now Gundersen Lutheran). From 1992 to 1996, he served on the former Board of Directors of Gundersen Clinic and played a key role in the negotiations and governance design that led up to the merger between Gundersen Clinic and Lutheran Health System. Since 1996, Dr. Thompson has been a member of the Board of Governors, and a member of the Board of Trustees. He served as executive vice president from 1995 to 2001. From 2001 to present he has served as chief executive officer.

Dr. Thompson is board certified in Pediatric Critical Care, Neonatal and Perinatal Medicine, and Pediatrics. He finished his Neonatal fellowship at Upstate Medical Center in Syracuse, N.Y., in 1984. He was a Pediatric resident, and then Chief resident from 1979 to 1982 at the same institution. He completed his Pediatric internship at the University of California-Davis from 1978 to 1979. Dr. Thompson graduated in 1978 from the University of Wisconsin-Madison Medical School. He is a member of the American Academy of Pediatrics as well as their subsections in Neonatal and Critical Care Medicine and is a member of American College of Physician Executives. Dr. Thompson has authored a number of articles, book chapters and abstracts on many healthcare topics.

John Torinus

Since 1987, John Torinus has been the CEO of Serigraph, a global provider of innovative printed decorating solutions. He previously served as president for Competitive Wisconsin, an organization that measures the economic health and competitive position of the state, where he continues as director.

Torinus is a former business editor with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and currently writes a business column for the paper. He also co-chairs the Milwaukee Task Force on Health Care Cost Concerns.

Torinus earned a bachelor’s degree in industrial administration from Yale and graduated from the University of Stockholm with a masters’ degree in international relations.

John Toussaint

John is one of the foremost figures in the adoption of lean principles in healthcare. Under his leadership, Catalysis has launched peer-to-peer learning networks, developed in-depth workshops, and created many products – including books, DVDs and webinars. Catalysis sponsors the Lean Healthcare Transformation Summit each year – both in the U.S. and in Europe. The Catalysis team has built C-suite coaching capability and partners with many organizations throughout the world advancing the idea of healthcare value through delivery redesign using lean, transparency of healthcare performance data, and payment reform.

He was the founding chair of the Wisconsin Collaborative for Healthcare Quality and of the Wisconsin Health Information Organization, as well as the non-executive leader of the Partnership for Healthcare Payment Reform in Wisconsin. He has participated in many Institute of Medicine subcommittees and has directly worked with CMS leaders to broaden their understanding of lean for government.

Dr. Toussaint’s healthcare improvement work using Toyota Production System principles has been well documented in articles published in Mayo Clinic Proceedings, Health Affairs, The Journal of Patient Safety, The Journal of Healthcare Management, Healthcare: The Journal of Delivery Science and Innovation, Harvard Business Review and Frontiers in Health Services Management. His work on payment reform and the transparency of provider performance data has been featured in The American Journal of Managed Care, The Journal of the American Medical Association, Health Affairs, and the Commonwealth Fund publications.  News publications such as TIME, The Wall Street Journal, the CNBC Blog, The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and Healthcare Finance News have featured articles about Dr. Toussaint’s work.

Dr. Toussaint has been recognized for his work in transforming healthcare by organizations such as The Business Healthcare Group of Wisconsin, which awarded him the “Driving Meaningful Change” award in 2014, The Association of Manufacturing Excellence (AME), which inducted him into its 2012 Hall of Fame, and the Jon M. Huntsman School of Business at Utah State University, which hosts the Shingo Prize for Operational Excellence. Dr. Toussaint was named a lifetime member of the Shingo Academy in 2011. Wisconsin Governor Jim Doyle also honored Dr. Toussaint with a Certificate of Commendation for Innovation from the State of Wisconsin in 2005.

He has been a featured speaker at the Association for Manufacturing Excellence, The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services, The Shingo Prize, The Lean Enterprise Institute, the Institute for Healthcare Improvement and many international conferences. He also presents regularly to legislators, Medicare leaders and government staff on the topic of healthcare value.

Dr. Toussaint has written three books all of which have received the prestigious Shingo Research and Publication Award. His groundbreaking first book, On the Mend: Revolutionizing Healthcare to Save Lives and Transform the Industry reveals how healthcare can be fundamentally improved at the point of delivery using the proven principles of lean management. His second book, Potent Medicine: The Collaborative Cure for Healthcare, describes the three core elements necessary to transform healthcare and deliver better value; delivery of care designed around the patient; transparency of treatment quality and cost; and payment for outcomes. His third book, Management on the Mend: The Executive Guide to System Transformation is a study of eleven organizations and the successful attempts to apply lean principles in healthcare.  Dr. Toussaint is also the winner of ACHE’s 2014 Dean Conley Award for his article “A Management, Leadership and Board Road Map to Transforming Care for Patients,” published in the Spring 2013 issue of Frontiers of Health Services Management.