Faculty

Katie Anderson

Faculty

Katie Anderson is a leadership coach and consultant focused on helping leaders develop new skills for leading in a lean environment. She has supported change initiatives at more than a dozen healthcare organizations during her career. Katie held senior lean leadership roles at Stanford Children’s Hospital and the Palo Alto Medical Foundation (Sutter Health) before starting her own consulting practice in 2013.

Katie is currently a faculty member of Catalysis, the Lean Enterprise Institute, and Temple University’s Tokyo Campus. She is a coach for the Fisher School of Business MBOE program and is member of the Quality and Patient Experience Board Committee at a Silicon Valley hospital. She has been an invited speaker at multiple international lean conferences and has authored publications on Lean, healthcare quality and health policy. She has written about leadership, lean, and her experiences living in Japan in 2015-2016 on her blog: www.kbjanderson.com.

Katie holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Human Biology with honors from Stanford University and a Masters of Philosophy in Public Health (MPhil) from the University of Sydney (Australia).

Joanne Bicknell, CSM

Faculty

Joanne has led lean transformations at a variety of organizations in the healthcare industry including health plans, hospitals, accountable care organizations and healthcare tech companies. In her most recent role Joanne focused on the lean “Voice of the Customer,” building systems to connect customer voice to corporate strategy that was scaled throughout the organization.

Previously, Joanne initiated corporate lean programs that included the use of lean management systems to enable deployment of corporate strategy. She also implemented a lean improvement system that resulted in thousands of improvements initiated and implemented by front-line employees. Joanne’s focus is on creating systems to enable daily work improvement and long term cultural change. She is a certified SCRUM (software development methodology) master and has a degree in Computer Information Systems and Organizational Development from Regis University, Denver, Colorado.

Max Brown

Faculty

Max Brown is a speaker, leadership coach and author. He works with leading organizations to create purpose driven workplaces.

Over the past twenty years, Max has made nearly three thousand presentations and met with leaders in locations all around the world. He’s taken clients rappelling off the Great Wall of China, facilitated at the Parliament of World Religions Conference in Spain, and spoken in hundreds of cities including Athens, Bangalore, Beijing, Dublin, Hong Kong, The Hague, Mumbai, Paris, New York, Shanghai, Singapore, Toronto, Vancouver, and Sydney . . . Nebraska.

Max regularly presents at one of GE’s highest-rated leadership programs sharing insights from his book, “Leadership Vertigo: Why Even the Best Leaders Go Off Course and How They Can Get Back On Track.” He is a recommended “all-star” keynote speaker from the International Association of Business Communicators and his keynotes consistently receive rave reviews from clients like: 3M, American Express, Southwest Airlines, The Nature Conservancy, HSBC and The Canadian Federal Government.

He has a certificate in Leadership Coaching from Georgetown University, a master’s degree in Organizational Learning from George Mason University, and graduated magna cum laude from Brigham Young University. He also speaks Mandarin Chinese after seven years of living in Taipei and Shanghai.

Lydia Chudleigh

Faculty

Lydia Chudleigh has been a leader at St. Mary’s General Hospital in Kitchener Ontario for 30 years.  Most recently, from 2010 to 2016, she was the Vice President, People and Organization Effectiveness.  With facilitation and consultation from Kim Barnas (CEO, Catalysis), Lydia and her team guided St. Mary’s through development and integration of a fully comprehensive Lean Management System that includes systems at the Senior team, Board of Trustees and at the department/program level.   It was through the adoption of Lean principles and a comprehensive Lean Management System that St. Mary’s was able to develop and deploy strategic operational goals and engage their organization to become “the safest and most effective hospital in Canada characterized by innovation, compassion and respect.” 

Lydia has assisted other health care organization such as Saskatoon Regional Health, Saskatchewan to develop aligned organization goals and a Lean Management System to support True North.  She also facilitates executive site visits at St. Mary’s General Hospital in partnership with Catalysis.

Lydia began her career in health care as a Clinical Dietitian, she holds a Bachelor of Applied Science degree from the University of Guelph and an MBA from Wilfrid Laurier University. 

Mike De Luca

Faculty

Mike De Luca works with companies to evolve strategy and achieve outcomes by improving processes and developing the teams that support them.

Mike’s 25 years of experience include over 15 years of leadership experience in the corporate environment and over 13 years of experience bringing Lean principles to life in department and organizational processes and culture. Prior to starting his consulting practice, Mike served as Executive Director of Finance at Group Health Cooperative in Seattle, where he led the Lean transformation of his own department, evolved the role of Finance to meet the changing needs of a Lean organization, and co-led the Lean transformation of the budgeting process across the enterprise.

In his consulting practice, Mike has worked with companies on lean strategic planning and deployment, value stream mapping and improvement, and cross-functional process improvement in finance and operational areas such as revenue cycle, supply chain and clinical care delivery. In partnership with clients, he has developed driver-based forecasting models and continuous adaptive financial planning processes, taught and coached daily improvement methods, root cause analysis, and visual management.

Mike is a featured speaker at conferences including the Lean Accounting Summit, Lean Healthcare Transformation Summit, and conferences of the Beyond Budgeting Round Table (North America), where he serves as the Healthcare Program Director. Mike has a Master of Science in Finance degree from Seattle University, is a Fellow of the Healthcare Financial Management Association (HFMA) and holds the Certified Healthcare Financial Professional (CHFP) designation.

Jennifer Dieter

Faculty

Jennifer consults with executives to develop and operationalize new business strategies that improve organizational and financial health. She has worked with organizations of all sizes to create sustainable, scalable processes and systems. ToDoBe clients drive toward the results they need (their to do’s) while becoming an organization engaged in continuous improvement focused on the right behaviors for long term organizational health (their to be’s).

Jennifer has assisted numerous organizations in the healthcare industry with lean implementations. She has extensive experience developing and implementing systemic change across the healthcare continuum. Jennifer has also created and implemented alternate care models including the design of numerous models of care and tests of change across patient populations and visit types. She received her Bachelor of Arts degree in philosophy from Smith College, and earned a Master of Arts in psychology from Antioch University.

Patsy Engel

Faculty

Patsy is a registered nurse with 25 years of clinical experience with an emphasis on quality and chronic disease management. She has a Bachelors Degree in Nursing and Management and is a certified asthma educator. Patsy also holds a Lean Bronze Certification from the SME/AME.

In 2005 Patsy became a lean facilitator for the ThedaCare Improvement System (TIS) and served as the lead facilitator for the Cancer Services Value Stream. She was instrumental in developing the improvement system’s training programs, and has served as faculty for the TIS internship for hospital managers and supervisors. She has also served as a coach and mentor for numerous ThedaCare operational leaders.

In her most recent role as a Director of Operations, Patsy supported Appleton Medical Center, ThedaClark Medical Center, and the Transitions of Care Division of ThedaCare in creating spread models and teams to accomplish rapid cycle improvement. She held an integral role in the development of ThedaCare’s lean management system and now serves as a lead in the management system training.

Her current focus is teaching our Creating a Lean Management System program.

Karen Flom

Faculty

Karen Flom is a continuous improvement leader and coach, accomplished in transforming organizational performance through talent development and strategy execution, aligned with vision and purpose.  Experienced in supporting teams with the application of problem-solving frameworks, providing focus, and instilling ownership to elevate organizational capability.

Beginning in 2005, Karen spent two years as an improvement facilitator within ThedaCare, supporting system service initiatives as well as operational units within the hospital division.  She brought her passion for lean methodologies and talent development to clinical operational leadership in radiation oncology and cancer services for over nine years, transforming unit performance of patient satisfaction, productivity, quality, and engagement through value stream analysis application.   As an operational leader, she served on the steering team and piloted the initial development of ThedaCare’s lean management system created to support leaders to better understand their business, develop strong collaborative teams, and create visual management to see and improve performance. 

Karen also served on the Organizational Excellence team for ThedaCare as a Continuous Improvement Consultant, responsible for coaching system leaders in developing team talents through the implementation of lean methodologies, evaluating performance through organizational excellence assessment, and determining targeted countermeasures for continuous improvement. 

Karen is a certified facilitator for Franklin Covey programs including:  7 Habits of Highly Effective People and Leading at the Speed of Trust.  She holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in psychology from Lawrence University. 

Mark Graban

Faculty

Mark Graban is author of the Shingo-Award winning book “Lean Hospitals: Improving Quality, Patient Safety, and Employee Engagement.” Mark is also co-author, with Joe Swartz, of Healthcare Kaizen: Engaging Front-Line Staff in Sustainable Continuous Improvements (also a Shingo recipient) and The Executive Guide to Healthcare Kaizen. His latest book is titled Measures of Success: React Less, Lead Better, Improve More. 

He serves as a consultant to healthcare organizations and is also a senior advisor to the technology company KaiNexus.

Mark has a B.S. in Industrial Engineering from Northwestern University and an M.S. in Mechanical Engineering and an M.B.A. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Leaders for Global Operations Program. Mark and his wife live in Texas.

Margie Hagene

Faculty

Margie is an organizational effectiveness and lean transformation professional. For over thirty years, she has helped executives and senior leaders realize their changing roles and responsibilities, and has supported them in developing appropriate behaviors and skills for leading in a complex environment.

For eighteen years, Margie worked as a global internal consultant for Ford Motor Company at all levels within the organization – from team leaders to the COO – in Product Development, Design and Manufacturing. The past thirteen years, Margie has worked in a variety of leading service and manufacturing industries, including healthcare, K-12 education, distribution, food service, transportation/mobility, and retail. Her work has included university programs in areas of leadership development, lean thinking, and organizational learning. Margie’s ongoing community work focuses on issues of hunger relief and land conservation.

Clients invariably learn to appreciate Margie’s ability to quickly assess leadership qualities, identify issues of misalignment among management, and recognize disconnects between official policy and actual behaviors. She embodies the belief that it is the effective blend of both the social and technical elements in complex systems that determine the sustainable effectiveness of any transformational efforts.

Margie holds a Bachelor of Science Degree from Butler University, Indiana (USA), and a Master of Science Degree from Indiana University (USA).  She was also chair of the Board of Directors (and 22-year volunteer) for Food Gatherers, Washtenaw County, MI Hunger Relief.

Pam Helander

Faculty

Pam Helander has spent three decades in healthcare in the roles of bedside nurse, quality team member and leader, executive in hospital operations and system quality, and lean expert.  She has worked as a coach/mentor of lean processes as well as the leader of a Value stream, transforming care and developing people.  Her work life has been at ThedaCare, an integrated health system in Wisconsin.  She has also served on statewide task forces and local community forums (i.e. Rotary, Leadership Fox Cities, WNA Interprofessional Education). 

She is a registered nurse (BSN) with a Masters in Organizational Leadership and Quality and has recently started working on her Doctorate in Nursing Practice.  Pam’s passion is for coaching others and seeing them grow as they understand how they can make a difference and see positive outcomes from their efforts.

Karl Hoover

Faculty

Karl Hoover has been leading change in healthcare for over 36 years. He brings extensive experience and success to his executive coaching and consulting with expertise in developing lean leaders, strategy development and deployment, and organizational transformation through the implementation of lean-based management systems. 

For several years, Karl served as the Executive Director, Enterprise Quality & Operational Excellence for Group Health Cooperative in Seattle, WA, working directly with the CEO and executive leadership team in creating, implementing, and leading the lean management system across the corporation. 

Karl’s areas of focus include executive coaching and development, lean management system design and implementation, and training/facilitation focused on strategy deployment, active daily management and value streams. Previous clients include Lucille Packard Children’s Hospital, Kaiser Permanente, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, University of Iowa Healthcare, and Stanford Hospital and Clinics.

Karl is a faculty member of Catalysis and has been teaching workshops in lean leadership since 2013 as well as co-facilitating the semi-annual Catalysis CEO Forums. 

Karl holds a Bachelor of Science in Psychology and a Master’s in Audiology, both from Washington State University.

Michael Hoseus

Faculty

Mike is Executive Director for the Center for Quality People & Organizations (CQPO). Mike Hoseus brings both manufacturing operations and specialization in Human Resource experience to CQPO. CQPO is an organization developed in 1999 as a vision of Toyota Motor Manufacturing to share Lean Quality philosophy and human resource practices with education, business, and community organizations. CQPO current projects with Toyota include New Hire selection and training process, Team Leader and Group Leader post promotion training, Quality Circle Leader and Manager training, and Global Problem Solving for all levels. Mike is co-author with Dr. Jeffery Liker (Author of the Toyota Way) of Toyota Culture. Mike is an adjunct professor with the University of Kentucky’s Center for Manufacturing, the University of Dayton’s Center for Competitive Change and a member of the faculty of Lean Enterprise Institute.

Prior to CQPO, Mike was a corporate leader for 13 years at Toyota Motor Manufacturing’s Georgetown, Kentucky, plant both in Human Resources and Manufacturing. As Assistant General Manager in Human Resources, his responsibilities included personnel, safety, HR development, employee relations, benefits, training, and manufacturing/human resource teams for a plant of 8000 team members. His major initiative was development of the enhanced relationship between Human Resource and Manufacturing. Mike’s operational responsibilities in manufacturing started in 1987 as a front line supervisor in vehicle assembly. This included all aspects of safety, quality, productivity, cost and morale for operations. With experience as Assembly Plant Manager and eventually Assistant General Manager, his responsibilities increased to include both assembly plants including operations, maintenance, and engineering.

Mike currently supports organizations with Lean Culture transformations focusing on the roles of Executive Management and Human Resources and how the quality people value stream connects to the production value stream.

Mike has served and contributed to numerous community boards such as the Kentucky Community and Technical College System and the Lexington Mayor’s Partnership for Youth. Mike has degrees in Business and Psychology from Xavier University and a Masters of Arts in Counseling from Asbury Theological Seminary. 

Jeff Hunter

Faculty

Jeff Hunter has extensive experience in healthcare leadership, strategy formulation and strategy deployment. His peers respect his ability to analyze and synthesize complex information and ideas; communicate them in clear, understandable, and actionable terms; and facilitate strategic thinking among leadership teams with engaging, visual methods.

Jeff has a special interest in facilitating strategic thinking for professional organizations such as healthcare, higher education, and service organizations, as well as not-for-profit community agencies. His coaching and facilitation enables others to manage vision and purpose with strategic agility.

Jeff is on the faculty of Catalysis and the Donald J. Schneider School of Business and Economics at St. Norbert College. He is also a Strategic Planning Fellow for Sg2, a leading provider of health care intelligence, analytics, and consulting.

From 1991 until his retirement in 2015 he was the Senior Vice President, Strategy and Marketing for ThedaCare, a community-sponsored system of hospitals, physicians, behavioral health services, and home care based in Appleton, Wisconsin. He was primarily responsible for strategic planning, marketing, government relations, philanthropy, and e-health.

Prior to joining ThedaCare in 1991, Mr. Hunter managed the consulting practice for Brim Healthcare in Portland, Oregon.  He began his career in healthcare with Presbyterian/St. Luke’s Medical Center in Denver, Colorado.  Mr. Hunter received his B.S. in Economics from the University of Detroit and his M.A. in Health Services Administration from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Mr. Hunter is actively involved in his community, is a member of the Board of Visitors of the Donald J. Schneider School of Business and Economics at St. Norbert College, and Past President of the Board of Directors of the Boys and Girls Club of the Fox Valley.

Jim Marks, MD

Faculty

Dr. Marks is Professor and Vice-Chairman of the Department of Anesthesia and Perioperative Care at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) and Chief of the Medical Staff and Chief of Anesthesia at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital and Trauma Center (ZSFG).

Dr. Marks received his medical degree from UCSF where he also completed residencies in Internal Medicine and Anesthesia and a fellowship in Critical Care Medicine.  He received his Ph.D. in molecular biology from the Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, England.

As a physician scientist, Dr. Marks is an internationally recognized pioneer in the field of antibody engineering, has had constant federal funding for 23 years and has authored more than 200 publications and 100 patents.  In recognition of these scholarly achievements, he was elected to the National Academy of Medicine.

As an entrepreneur, he has co-founded four biotechnology companies and currently serves on five biotechnology corporate Boards.

As Chief of the Medical Staff at ZSFG, Dr. Marks is an integral part of the Executive hospital leadership team using Lean Management to transform health care delivery at ZSFG. He has been particularly focused on how to align and engage physicians with the improvement work. He is also the Executive sponsor for the Emergency Department value stream and daily management system. He will describe countermeasures being deployed at ZSFG at both the senior leadership level and with frontline staff to increase physician engagement.  

Jill Menzel

Faculty

Jill has over ten years of experience coaching lean principles, A3 thinking, and lean management system development. 

Jill has spent eight years at ThedaCare as a Lean Facilitator, Hospitalist Manager, and Medical Staff Manager where she was an early adaptor, mentor, and coach of ThedaCare’s lean management system.  She has successfully taught and coached lean concepts to both employed and independent physicians resulting in patient satisfaction, productivity, quality, and engagement improvements.  Jill also supported hospital leadership in daily improvement, rapid improvement events, and value stream work.  In addition, since 2012 she has been coaching a local Wisconsin school district as they implement lean thinking in the classroom.

Jill earned a degree in Chemical Engineering from Washington University in St. Louis, MO and in Chemical Physics from the College of St. Catherine in St. Paul, MN.  Prior to joining ThedaCare, Jill had twelve years of experience in manufacturing and quality roles in the paper industry.

Mike Orzen

Faculty

Mike delivers a unique blend of Lean, Six Sigma, IT and Operations. His career of consulting and coaching for over 20 years includes the successful application of Lean and Operational Excellence in many environments including Manufacturing and Service industries, IT, Logistics, Insurance, Healthcare, Aerospace, and Food & Beverage. He has been plant manager of a medical implants facility, and spearheaded strategic planning and Project Management Office practices in several organizations. Mike’s experience includes systems design, enterprise-wide project management and large-scale roll out of Lean initiatives in global companies as guide and coach.

Mike is coauthor of the award-winning book Lean IT: Enabling and Sustaining Your Lean Enterprise. The book explores many aspects of Lean IT – including integrating IT with the business, information-based process improvement, Agile software development, infrastructure operations, ITIL, cloud computing and project management.

He holds degrees from Stanford University and the University of Oregon as well as certifications in Management Accounting, Production and Inventory Control, Project Management, Six Sigma and Agile.

Mike acts as Adjunct Professor with The Shingo Prize for Operational Excellence, is a faculty member of the Lean Enterprise Institute and Portland State University.

Steve Player

Faculty

Steve Player serves as the North America Program Director for the Beyond Budgeting Round Table (BBRT) and works with BBRT member companies to implement continuous planning processes. He has over 30 years’ experience with improving performance management and implementing strategic planning processes. He is also the Managing Director of Beyond EPS Advisors, a Business consulting firm, and founder of ABM SMART.

Steve is the co-author of Future Ready: How to Master Business Forecasting and Beyond Performance Management as well as five other books. He writes the “Finance Transformation” column for Business Finance Magazine featuring CFO interviews from leading organizations on innovative finance and planning processes. 

Didier Rabino

Faculty

Didier Rabino is M Health Fairview’s Vice President, Executive Lean Sensei. In this role, he provides coaching to senior executives and Board of Director members. Didier’s support to the organizational lean transformation started in 2012 with the deployment of the principles, managerial and technical sides of lean.

Previously, Didier spent 8 years at Andersen Corporation as plant manager in Menomonie, WI and as the leader of the Lean Promotion Office to develop and deploy the Andersen Manufacturing System (AMS).

Didier also worked for 13 years at Steelcase in England, France and Michigan. He held several leadership positions in operations, R&D and logistics. He is one of the architects of the Steelcase Production System (SPS).

Over the past 25 years, Didier has been leading and supporting lean transformations and new process implementations in manufacturing and healthcare organizations.

Didier is Director of the AME North Central Region Board, an instructor for Manufacturers Alliance, for the Institute of Industrial and Systems Engineers (IISE), and for the Shingo Lean Bronze certification class and associated exam.

Didier holds a Wood Mechanical Engineering degree from the University of Nancy, France, a Business and Administration degree from the University of Perpignan, France and a master’s degree in Industrial Sciences from Louis Pasteur University in Strasbourg, France. He obtained lean certificates from the University of Michigan, the University of Tennessee, Kellogg University, the lean bronze certification from the Shingo Institute and the 3P certification from Shingijutsu Global Consulting.

Didier is the 27th recipient of the Honorary Member Award of the Institute of Industrial Engineering. Award received in 2015. Past recipients include Edwards Deming, Lee Iacocca, W. Von Braun and Herbert C. Hoover.

Mike Radtke

Faculty

Mike Radtke helps provide coaching, teaching, and support to organizations through their lean transformations. Mike previously served in different leadership capacities for ThedaCare over the last 15 years, including roles as an improvement facilitator, ancillary services manager, director of diagnostic imaging, and most recently as an operational vice president with oversight of areas including perioperative services, trauma, air medical, therapies, and rehab. Prior to his leadership roles, Mike worked for six years as a physical therapist at one of ThedaCare’s critical access hospitals in New London.

Mike was first introduced to lean process improvement and leadership practices in 2003 as ThedaCare began their lean journey. He had the opportunity to learn and apply lean practices both as a member of the improvement department and as an operation leader. Mike was part of the team that initially created ThedaCare’s lean management system as documented in Kim Barnas’ book Beyond Heros. He has been faculty with Catalysis since 2012, teaching lean management system behaviors and practices throughout North America. Mike also teaches and coaches A3 Thinking, Coaching for Improvement, and recently created a workshop on Kata in Healthcare, which explores how to build patterns of continuous improvement and coaching competency to complement A3 thinking and practice.  He also provides executive coaching support for healthcare organizations.

Mike has a bachelor’s degree in physical therapy from the University of Wisconsin—La Crosse and is currently pursuing his Master’s degree in Organizational Change Leadership from UW—Platteville. Mike has taught at numerous conferences throughout the United States on lean and lean leadership in healthcare, including being the keynote speaker at the Maine Lean Summit in 2013.

Jacob Raymer

Faculty

Jacob Raymer is an internationally recognized speaker addressing corporate and public audiences on the subjects of leadership roles & responsibilities, cultural transformation, and how to achieve enterprise excellence with the right behavior and sustainable long-term results. 

As the former Shingo Prize Director of Education at the Jon M. Huntsman School of Business, Jacob co-created the Shingo Model from key insights gained through partnerships with Steven Covey and Ritsuo Shingo (Former CEO of Toyota China).  The Shingo Prize is regarded as the premier operational excellence award and recognition program in the world with Business Week dubbing The Shingo Prize as “the Nobel Prize of Manufacturing.”  For over 10 years Jacob has developed and trained Shingo Examiners and 1000’s of individuals worldwide on how to assess and implement lean transformation by applying the Shingo Model and its principles. He continues to lecture at the Huntsman School of Business at Utah State University in graduate courses such as “Leadership and Operational Excellence in a Global Context”, and “Principles of Operational Excellence” – where he brings practical application to the theoretical philosophy of excellence. 

As a lean motivational speaker, Mr. Raymer shows organizations that true innovation is not achieved by superficial imitation or the isolated, random use of lean tools & techniques and systems (“know how”), but instead requires the “know why” — i.e., an understanding of underlying Principles.  By blending his real-life stories and 5 years of Shingo Prize site-visits, Mr. Raymer educates, motivates, and entertains—delivering solutions audiences can use right away.

Maryjeanne Schaffmeyer

Faculty

Maryjeanne Schaffmeyer formerly served as COO for the Hospital Division of ThedaCare and served ThedaCare for 20 years in several leadership positions.  In 2005, as a Business Unit Manager for Obstetrics, she piloted the current Business Performance System (BPS) and worked with the BPS design team to develop and pilot the leadership standard work. In this role she was able to see clearly the importance of a management system that would help support leaders to understand their business, to optimize their use of lean tools, and to see and improve their performance.

Later, as VP of Operations for Appleton Medical Center, Maryjeanne had the opportunity to build a team of managers using the Business Performance System as a model for leadership development and daily continuous improvement. As the Chief Operating Officer for the Hospital, Care Transitions and Homecare Division at ThedaCare, Maryjeanne led the spread of BPS throughout the expanded division.

Jason Schulist

Faculty

Jason Schulist is the President of the Generative Local Community Institute (GLCI), a non-profit whose mission is to connect communities so that they can improve their problem-solving capability and accelerate community impact.  Prior to forming GLCI, Jason served as Appvion’s Vice President of Continuous Improvement (CI) from 2013-2017.  Appvion’s CI Deployment was awarded Runner-up in the PEX Global Award for Most Innovative Culture Change Deployment for 2016 and consistently exceeded Appvion’s Profit Improvement goals.  

Mr. Schulist worked in the Utility Industry from 2004-2013 with roles as DTE Energy’s Director of the Program Management Office (PMO) managing a $1B portfolio of projects and as Director of Continuous Improvement saving over $700M while building CI capability and winning the IPQC’s Best Process Improvement Program in 2010.  Prior to DTE Energy, Mr. Schulist held management positions in lean operations, business development, and corporate strategy with General Motors. 

Mr. Schulist earned a bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from Marquette University and two Masters’ degrees in Electrical Engineering/Computer Science and Management from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).  Mr. Schulist is a Lean Six Sigma Black Belt and has a Project Management Professional (PMP) certification.

Jason has a passion for generative local community and has founded the Skillsfest movement that applies Continuous Improvement to thorny community problems. He is a co-founder of the Michigan Lean Consortium and past Chair.  He currently serves on the Boards of the United Way of the Fox Cities, CAP Services, the MIT Club of Wisconsin, and the POINT Poverty Initiative in Northeast Wisconsin.

Don Shilton

Faculty

Don Shilton has been the president at St. Mary’s General Hospital in Kitchener, Ontario, Canada since 2010.  Shortly after becoming president he and his Board unveiled an ambitious new vision for St. Mary’s to become “the safest and most effective hospital in Canada characterized by innovation, compassion and respect.”  The Board agreed to use Hospital Standardized Mortality Ratio (HSMR) as the overall indicator for safety.

Under Don’s leadership, St. Mary’s began implementing lean in 2011.  As with many lean implementations St. Mary’s started strong and then began to struggle.  In 2013, they engaged KPMG and Kim Barnas to assist with board and executive coaching and to help implement a Lean Management System (LMS). In 2016, St. Mary’s achieved the lowest Hospital Standardized Mortality Ratio in Canada for the second time in five years leading some in the media to call St. Mary’s, “the safest hospital in Canada.”

The St. Mary’s Board has also embraced lean thinking.  They start all Board meetings with a Board member-led huddle and they regularly gemba walk throughout the hospital to better understand the connection between organizational strategy and front line work.

Don is a Respiratory Therapist who holds a Bachelor of Science from the University of Waterloo and an MBA in Health Services Management from McMaster University. 

Scott Smith

Faculty

Scott Smith is the President of High Performance Solutions and Consortium and the Vice Chair of the Board of Directors at St. Mary’s General Hospital. He has over 25 years of experience in Lean Thinking, Continuous Improvement Facilitation, Leadership Development and Organizational Systems Thinking.

Scott’s primary area of focus is to build and facilitate Continuous Improvement Consortiums. Currently, he facilitates the High Performance Manufacturing Consortium (HPM), the Alliance for Enterprise Excellence Consortium (AfEE), the Continuous Improvement Alliance (CIA), the Cambridge Capacity Consortium (CCC), the Waterloo Wellington Impact Consortium (WWIC) and the University of Waterloo Continuous Improvement Consortium.

Scott’s focus is to Develop the World’s Best Continuous Improvement Organizations through Organizational Systems Thinking.  He currently works with organizations in the manufacturing, service, support not for profit, higher education and healthcare sectors.

Ted Toussaint

Faculty

Ted teaches, writes, and consults on healthcare innovation both independently and with Catalysis. He uses expertise in design thinking, strategy formulation, and lean product development to help teams discover and implement breakthrough organizational change initiatives.

Ted began his healthcare career at Boston Children’s Hospital where he served the Six Sigma team to develop measurement systems and audit processes to improve hospital cleanliness. He then moved to Atrius Health in Boston, where he worked as a front-line improvement specialist and an Innovation Engineer. While there he helped build the Atrius Health Innovation Center and worked with teams to design new clinical care models.  With Ted’s assistance, the innovation team designed and created the organization’s first home-based urgent care program, which reduced overall costs for elderly patient care by $1.5 million annually.

Ted co-wrote the article “How Atrius Health Is Making the Shift from Volume to Value” which was published in Harvard Business Review. He received a Bachelor of Arts degree in Physics from Lawrence University in Appleton, Wisconsin.

Elizabeth Warner

Faculty

Elizabeth J. Warner, MD FACP CPE received her Medical Doctorate from Michigan State University, College of Human Medicine, with AOA designation, and completed her Internal Medicine residency at Kalamazoo Center for Medical Studies.  She continues to pursue lifelong learning as a Masters student in Positive Organizational Development at Case Western Reserve University.  Elizabeth is a board-certified physician who has served clinically in ambulatory primary care, geriatric care in a post-acute setting and hospital-based palliative care. 

Seeing recurrent, entrenched care delivery problems, Dr. Warner developed her leadership skills to serve her community at a different level.  As Primary Care Medical Director at Bronson Healthcare Group, and then as Medical Director of Continuous Improvement Support, Elizabeth empowered all learners to embrace lean thinking in order to transform healthcare into a sustainable, joyous profession. She served as the internal “sensei” (coach) of her organization, and lead trainer for the system-wide management system implementation. 

Dr. Warner is now founder of Warner Well Being LLC, to serve healthcare transformation on a national level.  She has a unique blend of experience, curiosity and lean knowledge, anchored in the professional principles of medicine and Shingo principles of operational excellence.  Through coaching, training and speaking, Dr. Warner will propel individuals and organizations forward on their transformational journeys.