Ernie Arboles has over seven years of in-depth training and hands-on deployment of Six Sigma methodologies. He is a Certified Master Black Belt skilled in driving change through all levels of an organization by educating employees and executives on the value of continuous process improvement and quality enhancement programs.
Ernie began an eleven-year career with NBC starting as a journalist and television broadcast executive, holding numerous leadership positions covering the Olympic Games, several elections, and national and local news stories.
He was later promoted to Vice President of Quality where he introduced Six Sigma initiatives across an entire division of NBC. Here he spearheaded a number of cost saving and revenue generating projects and deployed Six Sigma to 300+ employees, developing the methodology and process for selecting, prioritizing and implementing quality improvement projects across the division. Most recently, Ernie led the planning and integration of three television stations in Los Angeles, producing the first English-Spanish co-located tri-opoly in the country.
Ernie holds a Bachelor's degree in Broadcast Journalism and an MBA in Finance, Organizational Behavior, Marketing & Sales from the Marshall School of Business at the University of Southern California.
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Jim has a strong background of Continuous Improvement, having held positions as an Industrial Engineer, Manufacturing Engineer and a Design Engineer. He received his Black Belt training in 1996 while at AlliedSignal Automotive, and generated substantial benefits for the organization in both the Manufacturing and Transactional areas. He has also worked as an Automotive Design Engineer in Detroit, integrating Design for Six Sigma and Design for Manufacturing principles into current and future automotive safety restraint products. He later held positions as a Black Belt and Master Black Belt at GE Industrial Systems.
Jim has been consulting for over 10 years and has experience in several industries, including: Paper & Printing, Automotive, Consumer Electronics, Aerospace, Internet Service Provision, Healthcare, Pharmaceuticals, Life Sciences, Medical Insurance, amongst others. His clients have included Adena Healthcare, United Healthcare, Fidelity Investments, Applied Biosystems, AOL, Nokia, Owens Corning, TRW, Sun Microsystems and Mead Paper. Jim also worked with the Penn State QMM program coaching and certifying Graduate Black Belt candidates.
Jim has worked many projects for clients utilizing Lean principles and Six Sigma problem solving, including changeover time reduction, establishing pull systems, improving equipment reliability, and reducing defects. Working with teams in manufacturing facilities and transactional offices, he has coordinated Kaizen teams to complete transformational change in weeklong and yearlong projects.
Jim has trained over 700 Black Belts and numerous Green Belts. He has conducted over 50 Black Belt and Green Belt training courses, and several Champion and Executive Overview sessions. In addition to the academic experience, Jim has coached and mentored over 1000 projects, thus having a great deal of practical experience applying Six Sigma and Lean Principles to a wide variety of business processes.
He holds a B.S. in Textile Engineering from the Southern College of Technology.
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Randall Benson in an author and management consultant who brings over 20 years experience helping clients adopt Lean practices. As a process and innovation expert, Randall was a pioneer in the application of Lean Principles and High Reliability theory in non-manufacturing industries. His work has been noted in several business books, including Leadership Without Excuses and Synchro Service. His projects have also been referenced in over 60 news and industry reports.
Randall has guided key initiatives such as developing the Lean manufacturing process for the Microsoft Mouse, creating the nation’s fastest emergency department at Oakwood Health System and facilitating the supply chain strategy for the Microsoft Hardware Division.
Today Randall combines Lean with his work in breakthrough initiatives and transformation. His Lean Breakthrough experience crosses a variety of industries, including manufacturing, healthcare, service, and government. His clients have included Microsoft, Kaiser Permanente, Yale University, The Port of Seattle and Equitable Life and Casualty.
Randall was introduced to Lean Principles in Japan while working as a manufacturing director for Pioneer Corporation. While at Pioneer he managed their US manufacturing supply chain. He went on to become a charter member in Coopers and Lybrand’s (now Price Waterhouse Cooper’s) Lean consulting practice. There he helped build the practice under the guidance of William Wheeler, one of the earliest Lean experts in the United States who was instrumental in establishing modern Lean practices. Randall went on to become Principal for the North American division of World Class International, a leading international Lean and supply chain consultancy
In addition to his active consulting work, Randall is President of BioCast Technologies, which holds U.S. patents on emerging medical technologies. Randall has also conducted national seminars on Lean Principles and Quality Management, including co-conducting national seminars with Dr. Richard Schonberger, the best-selling author on Japanese manufacturing practices. As an APICS Certified Fellow, Randall has trained over 2,000 Lean practitioners, and has conducted hundreds of workshops on process improvement, breakthrough change and innovation.
Randall is the author of the recently published book, The Quest Effect, which lays out his discoveries on organizational innovation and provides guidance for successfully navigating breakthrough initiatives. The concepts of The Quest Effect have been published in the Integral Leadership Review and featured on The American Innovator radio program.
Randall holds a BA in Economics and Industrial Technology from Western Washington University and an MBA in Operations Management from the University of Washington Foster School of Business.
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Ross Buckwalter has over 30 years of experience in the application of statistical and other methods related to quality and process improvement. His major areas of focus include statistical process control, statistical analysis methods, design of experiments, and Taguchi methods. He also has assisted and guided client companies in developing quality systems for certification to ISO 9000 and Boeing's D1-9000.
For the past six years Ross has been very active in the Six Sigma arena, having taught DMAIC and DMADV courses and also advanced courses incorporating more in-depth and hands-on statistical methods, for many clients. He has a unique ability in relating the often technical and esoteric statistical concepts and tools to real-world situations. He has guided many teams in the successful application of Six Sigma methodology to their process improvement projects.
Ross was a manager of Statistical Analysis at Hercules Aerospace. He also headed up a successful quality improvement initiative that involved training 4500 employees and guiding the implementation of basic quality tools. He has extensive experience in developing courses and conducting training in quality and statistics, and is the author of a series of 26 training modules for the Council for Continuous Improvement (CCI). Some of his client companies are Applied Materials, Hexcel, Pacific Bell, FMC, Texas Instruments, Varian and Kaiser Electronics.
Ross is a Senior Consultant with Pivotal Resources and holds both a B.A. and M.S. in Mathematical Statistics from Brigham Young University. He is a member of the American Statistical Association and the American Society for Quality Control.
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Pamela’s background as a line manager and improvement team leader in the services industry gives her special insights into applying Six Sigma and change leadership skills to diverse groups and organizations. She has more than 18 years experience as a consultant and trainer, advising clients on implementation and project execution.
Prior to entering consulting, Pamela spent most of her career in the real estate and relocation services industry, with such companies as Equitable, Travelers and PHH. At Cendant, now CARTUS, she was Regional Manager of Human Resources responsible for quality implementation, leadership development, organizational analysis, succession planning and OD interventions. Prior to Cendant, she was Director of Policy Development with a division of GE Capital Mortgage, where she held key management positions in account management, real estate acquisition and sales, closing and billing.
She moved into the consulting field in 1993, and in 1996 became part of the pioneering Pivotal Resources team that supported the global roll-out of Six Sigma and DMAIC for GE Capital. Pam's expertise in and understanding of the nuances of change management led to her becoming a certified Change Acceleration Process (CAP) facilitator, for which she has been a highly sought-after resource.
Thanks to Pivotal’s work with NBC, in 1998 Pamela took a one-year assignment consulting on the launch of the "QNBC" improvement initiative. Since then she has been active with a wide range of clients in the implementation of Lean Six Sigma—including Sears, Cisco, Vanguard Group, TRW, Johnson & Johnson, Starwood, Sun Microsystems, GMAC Insurance and A&P.
Her results have included reduced turnover by 46%, increased productivity by 50% and reduced waste by 33%.
Pamela holds an M.S. in Human Resources Education and Organizational Development from Fordham University and a B.A. in History and Geography from Boston University. She has also been an adjunct professor of Marymount College’s faculty, teaching Organizational Behavior.
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Michelle is an industrial/organizational psychologist and human resources professional with over 20 years of practical, hands-on experience in human resources consulting and corporate leadership roles. As a professional consultant, she helps organizations build strategic advantage with their people, and develop the special role that leadership, talent, and culture play in creating organizational effectiveness. She assists organizations with human resources and talent management strategy development, HR system design and implementation, leadership development, executive assessment, team building, employment branding, organizational and job design, and change management.
Michelle brings in-depth expertise on current best practices in human resources design, systems, programs, and technology, along with the wealth of practical experience that comes from leading the human resources functions for three organizations of varied size, industries, and business models. In addition to this rich human resources content knowledge, Michelle’s background in organizational development and her insights as an Industrial/Organizational Psychologist give her a unique ability and perspective to assist leaders and their organizations with key people issues.
Michelle was most recently Head of Human Resources at Bridgewater Associates, the world’s largest hedge fund which manages $74 billion in global assets for a wide array of institutional clients, located in Westport CT. She had responsibility for all areas of human resources for this high growth organization.
Previously, Michelle was Chief Talent Officer and Executive Vice President of Human Resources at 24 Hour Fitness. In this capacity, she had responsibility for all aspects of human resources and partnered with the senior team on key people and business issues. Headquartered in San Ramon, California, 24 Hour Fitness is an innovative leader in the health and fitness industry, with more than 3 million members in over 400 clubs worldwide.
Prior to joining 24 Hour Fitness in 2007, Michelle was Senior Vice President, Human Resources for Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide with responsibility for human resources globally, including 150,000 associates working in 800+ hotels in 80 countries around the world. Before assuming the role as head of human resources, Michelle spent 6 years with Starwood as Senior Vice President, Organizational Capability where she led the development of Starwood’s talent management, leadership development, recruiting & selection, learning and development, and organizational effectiveness functions.
Before her corporate HR roles, Michelle was Senior Vice President and Northeast Region Head for Aon Consulting’s Human Resources Consulting Group (formerly HRStrategies). Here, she was the regional practice leader with consulting engagements focused on competency modeling, selection and assessment, performance management, 360 degree feedback and employee surveys. Her clients included Allied Domecq, Allied Signal, Bell Atlantic, Capital One, Duracell, Florida Power & Light, Harley-Davidson, International Paper, Merck, Merrill Lynch, Nabisco, Pepsi, Pfizer, Texas Instruments, Warner-Lambert, and many others.
She holds a Bachelor’s Degree in psychology from Brown University and both Master of Arts and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Connecticut in industrial/organizational psychology. She has been a frequent speaker at professional conferences and business meetings on HR strategy, talent management, selection and assessment, service-profit chain and employee engagement, HR metrics, and building a service culture. In addition to internal company presentations at World Conferences, Regional and National meetings, Owners and Investors Conferences, and Board of Directors Meetings, her professional presentations include: The Conference Board, SHRM Strategy Conference, Argyle Executive Forum, Kenexa World Conference (key note speaker), HR Planning Society, Society of Industrial & Organizational Psychology, and the American Psychological Association. She has published in the Journal of Applied Psychology, Personnel Psychology and The Industrial/Organizational Psychologist.
Bob has over 25 years of experience in the field of quality and organization development, of which 11 years has been as an internal consultant / trainer in the high-tech industry in companies such as Sun Microsystems and Tandem Computers.
In 1996, Bob joined Pivotal Resources as a Senior Consultant. Throughout his career, he has worked with both domestic and international clients including Cisco Systems, Hewlett Packard, Sun Microsystems, TRW, Northrop Grumman, Wells Fargo Bank, Charles Schwab, Bank of America, PG&E, Exxon Oil, Chevron Oil, Microsoft, Aspect, Storage Tech, GE Capitol, Lam Research, Genentech, Disney Studios and a myriad of others. In addition to his US clients, his work has taken him to 25 countries and into 40 international cities. His clients span the globe from the Americas to Canada, Europe, the Middle East, and the Pacific Rim.
Bob approaches his work by forming a strong partnership with his clients with an emphasis of providing both the theoretical and practical knowledge to assist individuals and organizations in achieving their goals. His professional background includes delivering consulting and practical tools regarding: Lean Six Sigma, executive coaching, communication skills, individual and organization assessment, process consultation, problem solving & decision making, strategic planning, team development, change management, facilitation skills, leadership & management skills.
Bob holds a Master of Science Degree in Industrial/Organizational Psychology from San Francisco State University. In addition, he also holds an Instructor Credential from the California Community Colleges and has been an instructor in business and organization development at the community college level.
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Clare is a Master Black Belt specializing in application of Six Sigma and Lean quality improvements across business enterprises. Over the past 11 years, she has developed a strong track record of delivering highly successful results. Clare has worked across multiple industries and has a particular depth of knowledge in the Health Care industry. She is an experienced Six Sigma and Lean expert who possesses both the technical skills required to drive success as well as the ability to lead and teach others. She has worked with national and international customers such as Cisco Systems, HSBC, British Petroleum, GMAC, Sears Commercial Sales and Army Air Force Exchange Services. In addition to large organizations, Clare has worked with start-up companies, rapid-growth organizations and corporate integrations.
Clare has worked with many organizations as a technical resource to identify improvement opportunities, guide implementation of projects, and transfer critical skills to develop others. She has assisted senior leaders at the enterprise level in determining which initiatives will have the greatest impact on strategic and financial priorities and has worked closely with cross-functional teams to ensure successful implementation. Clare has worked across many industries with a focus on health care. She has worked closely with Operations, Call Centers, Sales, IT, Finance and Accounting, Human Capital, and Clinical departments of many health care companies.
Prior to becoming a consultant, Clare was the Vice President of Information Technology for Concentra Managed Care (a high-tech health care cost containment and worker's compensation company). She played a significant role in the growth of a corporate subsidiary from $18M to over 100$M and played a pivotal role in the technical and operational integration of a 5-company merger. Clare led the Design of the technical infrastructure and operational processes to support growth and industry demands. As a member of the corporate steering committee, she led teams of process owners in improvement and re-design projects. The system included an integration of balanced scorecard, executive dashboard and robust reporting functionality. Also responsible for budget planning, she saw this major undertaking completed at 95% of planned expenditures.
Clare holds Bachelor's, Master's and Doctoral degrees in Nutrition from the Clayton College of Natural Health in Birmingham, Alabama.
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Greg Gibbs is a quality and change execution professional with extensive experience in Lean and Six Sigma business process improvement, organizational change execution, and leadership coaching. In his 15 years as an organizational change consultant and trainer, Greg has worked with a variety of companies, either “on the inside” or in consulting roles, to improve company-wide change initiative implementation and business processes of all kinds. A Certified Lean Six Sigma Master Black Belt, he has led/coached multiple teams, including leading Lean events, resulting in significant business results.
At Sun Microsystems, his responsibilities as Director of the Lean Sigma Program Office included Lean Sigma program strategy development and implementation, Master Black Belt and Black Belt Development, including certification, Sigma and Lean training, and the Lean Sigma program management and support. He also coached team leads of projects chartered to create and utilize metrics of key corporate strategy implementation elements.
While at Genentech U.S.A, Greg was a lead in the roll out of the Capacity and Portfolio Management effort, which included many support functions and all production plants in the U.S. and Singapore. He also led the communication strategy and introduction of the Genentech Production System throughout Product Operations.
As a consultant and trainer, Greg has taught Six Sigma and Lean classes to team members, project leads, coaches, champions, and business process owners. He has provided coaching support to hundreds of Master Black Belts, Black and Green Belts, with project benefits in the millions of dollars. Recently, he guided the Lean Six Sigma efforts at Commander of Navy Installations Command, South Pacific region.
Some of his other notable clients include American Airlines, American Express, Bahamas Telecom, Becton-Dickinson, Carlson Companies, Cendant, Cisco Systems, GE Capital Financial Services, GMAC Mortgage, General Dynamics, Kaiser Permanente, and Sears Home Services.
Greg holds a BS in Experimental Psychology from the University of Illinois, was trained in Lean at the University of Michigan and is also a certified Emotional Intelligence coach. He has published articles on Six Sigma and process management and was a contributing editor to the best-selling book, The Six Sigma Way, published by McGraw-Hill.
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Chet is a seasoned finance executive whose interest in addressing critical business and operational problems led to a "second career" in consulting and continuous improvement. He has been providing consulting and training in process improvement and Six Sigma concepts for the past 20 years working with such organizations such as adidas, Clorox, Cisco Systems, GE Capital, Principal Financial Group, Sears, Sun Microsystems and others. His global experience includes work in such locations as London, Paris, Hong Kong, Sydney and Tokyo.
Prior to becoming a consultant, Chet spent 15 years in financial management positions within Hewlett Packard; he has operations and financial consulting experience with Coopers and Lybrand and KPMG as well. Chet has also worked with rapid-growth organizations and played a significant role in the growth of one start-up business whose revenue grew from $40M to $800M in a seven-year period.
Chet has taught Six Sigma skills to entry-level personnel, mid-level managers and executive staff. His outstanding support of the Six Sigma initiative at GE led to his work with several GE suppliers that have, in many cases, launched initiatives of their own. Chet's own financial experience has been especially valuable in aiding his clients with tracking and reporting results of process improvement and redesign efforts. His 35-year career has equipped him with a keen ability for translating skills and concepts into real-life application.
Chet has been a CPA since 1969 and holds Bachelor's and Master's degrees in Accounting from Brigham Young University.
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Evans is a dynamic business consultant and has led improvements in many different industries. A certified Master Black Belt, he can use Lean and Six Sigma process change methodologies to assist clients. He also brings his experience in Strategic Planning, Leadership Development and Assessment to assist clients to reach their goals.
Following eight years in the Air Force, where he flew, trained aircrews and evaluated aircrews, Evans began working in the Financial Services industry, developing leadership programs for a large Mutual Fund Company. While there, he also ran the Strategic Planning Process as well as the survey processes and helped the company launch Total Quality Management to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of company processes.
Evans led the development efforts for multiple locations of International Paper, developing curricula, presenting materials and assisting local leadership teams in improving their processes and practices.
He also led the Leadership Development effort for Cendant Mortgage, developing a competency based model to drive development decisions. He then was part of a team responsible for bringing Six Sigma to Cendant (now PHH) Mortgage and supported Six Sigma work in several other units of Cendant Corporation. In addition to training Black Belts and Green Belts, he led the team charged with redesigning the firm's core mortgage origination and underwriting process, which achieved a quantum leap in loan compliance and quality (essential to resell mortgages and free capital for additional loans).
As a Lean Six Sigma consultant Evans has worked with several leading companies to assist in applying Lean and Six Sigma to their core business activities. At BP, he has been a lead MBB consultant for the Refining and Marketing group's “Process Fitness” initiative, providing training, project coaching, materials development and implementation support. Working with the US Navy, he helped them launch their Six Sigma effort and coached on some of their early projects which led to improved measuring of contractors to ensure the Navy had received full value for their expenditures. He did an assessment for Thompson Compumark to show them where they should focus their improvement efforts and oversaw the selection and execution of their first project to improve the quality of trademark searches.
Other clients with whom he has recently worked include Cisco, NetApp, and Bahamas Telecommunications Company (BTC). At BTC, he led a project that removed 90% of the cycle time from a process and reduced the failure rate of the process at the same time. In another area, he was able to reduce the number of truck rolls that Technicians will need by providing skills, resources and tracking to the Call Centers to handle simple issues at the first customer contact, creating more than $500,000 per year in reduced costs and improved customer satisfaction.
His diverse experience, engaging presentation style and understanding of the challenges of organization change implementation have made Evans sought after as both consultant and trainer.
Evans holds a Bachelor's Degree in Marketing from Virginia Tech and an MBA from Golden Gate University.
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Colleen brings over 20 years of consulting experience and 10 years of experience designing and implementing Six Sigma programs. Colleen's dynamic approach to training involving targeted storytelling from her broad experience makes her an exceptional instructor and consultant.
Colleen has served on design teams for Six Sigma deployment while working for companies such as BHPBilliton, GE Capital, and GE Nuclear Services. Her roles included coaching business leaders, training over 3000 participants in the technical DMAIC approach and facilitating project teams as a Master Black Belt. Colleen understands process design requirements from a customer-driven perspective while balancing the strategic focus of improving business productivity and costs. She also teaches and coaches in change management and advanced statistical methods. Colleen's training courses are consistently evaluated as outstanding.
Colleen has been consulting in the service industry following several years with Mercer Management Consulting, where she managed Baldrige-based quality improvement initiatives and helped teams to redesign business processes for clients including Sun Microsystems, American Express, Consolidated Freightways, University of Colorado and Neighborhood Health Plans. In addition, Colleen has experience with General Motors where she designed and implemented statistical process control systems and with Dun & Bradstreet where she managed an operations staff of 40 and led strategic business improvement projects.
Since joining Pivotal Resources, she has been lead consultant on projects for Brinker International (Chili's Restaurant) and Target Stores. She has been a very popular instructor for Champions and project leader with numerous clients including adidas, Genworth, Cisco, Omnium and i3.
Colleen holds a B.S. in Industrial Engineering from Bradley University and an M.B.A. from Loyola University of Chicago. She has been a speaker at the Rocky Mountain Quality Conference and GE's Nuclear Annual Quality Conference.
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Kelly brings over 20 years of experience in process-based organization design, measurement and problem solving. Her areas of expertise include: Change Management and Facilitation; Process Management and Measurement, Six Sigma and Lean for Service Organizations; Business Process Reengineering; Baldrige-Based Business Assessment; Training Design, Development and Implementation; and Customer Listening System Design and Implementation.
Kelly has helped companies in the industries of Finance, Retail, Healthcare, Insurance, Energy, Telecom, and Entertainment/Broadcasting to design and implement successful organizational change, leading to long-term and sustainable benefits. Her practical approach was honed in her years in management with American Express, GE and Target. She is able to tailor proven best practices and methods to fit unique company cultures, people, and business needs, achieve speedy results, and ultimately build lasting internal capacity for continuous improvement.
Among her achievements, Kelly has led senior management teams in translating their strategic imperatives into business measurement systems, and comprehensive employee performance management processes that turned plans into action and results. She has designed and led company-wide Six Sigma initiatives, achieving millions of dollars in bottom-line benefits across diverse company divisions. She has also developed and implemented large-scale change initiatives to help client business bring about significant shifts in organizational processes and management practices.
Kelly has
established and coached cross-functional project teams to achieve over 40% improvement in performance.
In addition, Kelly has conducted leadership training and coaching programs to help managers become more effective change agents. She also has experience as the leader of an international Six Sigma training team, serving over 80,000 employees in 11 languages, with audiences that ranged from executives to front-line employees, and programs that integrated classroom and e-learning tools for higher efficiency and effectiveness.
Kelly holds a Bachelor's degree from the University at Albany, New York, and a Master's degree from the University of Minnesota.
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Judith is a dynamic, driven professional who is an expert in operational excellence utilizing business process design/reengineering and quality initiatives (including Lean/Six Sigma) to develop high impact solutions that improve gross margins. She has superior leadership skills, and strong strategic planning, problem-solving and decision-making abilities. Judith is successful in driving top-line and bottom-line outcomes, and improving corporate performance and value.
As a member of the corporate M&A team & integration leader at GE Financial Assurance, Judith delivered first year quality improvements and cost reductions of $1 million in profitability improvement. She applied Six Sigma quality tools (DMAIC, DFSS, CAP and Workout) to identify business process deficiencies/inefficiencies and execute solutions. For example, she helped to improve the productivity of the claims processing cycle by 60%, and the timeliness of cash posting by 300%. She also delivered a $3 million improvement (25% of the budget) to the bottom-line by outsourcing administrative functions using quality methodology.
With GE Capital, Judith led the Senior Executive Quality Council and managed a core team of five MBBs and 30 BBs. She delivered quality programs and initiatives credited with contributing $5+MM (10% of total divisional revenues) in net income while reducing budgets to 20% below target. She designed a set of quality standards and guidelines for implementation into the corporate M&A and due diligence process along with developing supply chain management processes (won 1st Supplier Quality award in GECS). Judith also conceived and implemented a “Customer Scorecard” for identifying critical operational deficiencies.
As a management consultant, Judith has served various organizations in the financial services and healthcare industries. For each of these organizations she helped improve process performance and establish Lean Six Sigma infrastructures. Her support has ranged from training, to coaching teams, to taking primary responsibility for delivering project results.
Judith earned a Masters of Science in Management from Purdue University and an MBA from Budapest University in Hungary. Her BS degree in Business Administration is from the University of Florida. Judith is a Certified Master Black Belt from GE Capital.
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Bob has been active as a management consultant, professor, and author since 1971. He is a senior consultant with Pivotal Resources and a co-author of two best-selling Six Sigma books, The Six Sigma Way, and The Six Sigma Way Team Fieldbook. Since 1996 he has trained and coached Six Sigma teams at companies such as General Electric, Sun Microsystems, Federated Department Stores, Starwood Hotels & Resorts and Cisco Systems. Bob's talent for translating abstract business concepts into a humorous narrative of practical examples appeals to a wide audience in a multitude of industries. His practical yet strategic outlook also allows him to relate to both senior managers and frontline associates.
Bob was the Training Manager for Continuous Quality Improvement for 7,000 employees at Sutter Health, Sacramento's largest private employer. In the 1980s, Bob was the lead consultant for the Izwana Participation Project at Western Deep Levels gold mine in South Africa, teaching problem solving to miners 8,000 feet underground. He was also the lead consultant for General Motors' "Common Sense" quality program for line employees in Detroit and Indianapolis.
In addition to clients like NBC and Employers' Reinsurance Corporation, Bob has provided process improvement training for Alamo Learning Systems, US Sprint, the Quality Alert Institute, and many government agencies, including the California Department of Corrections and the Colorado State Patrol.
Bob's doctorate is from Northwestern University, and he has been a Professor at Amherst College, the State University of New York, and California State University at Sacramento.
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Tracy is a senior consultant specializing in Six Sigma and Lean process improvement. As a Master Black Belt, Tracy advises companies and spearheads implementation on many aspects of process improvement including strategic planning, training, implementation, mentoring, project selection and results.
In 1999, Tracy started her process improvement career at GE Appliances as a Field Black Belt. Her primary role was to educate GE Appliance customers on Six Sigma and help to complete Six Sigma projects. Tracy also supported GE sales reps and managers in the western United States to complete six sigma projects.
After her days at GE, Tracy became a full time Process Improvement consultant. She has assisted many companies in diverse industries with deploying Lean and Six Sigma programs. Some of these companies include: Callaway Golf, Charles Schwab, Yum! Brand Foods, Cisco Systems, Motorola, Sears & Roebuck, Shea Homes, Trustmark Insurance and DC Shoes, San Diego State University, Oregon State Government, the Department of Veterans Affairs and the US Navy.
Tracy is an accomplished facilitator, trainer and presenter. She has trained over 1,000 people, mentored 200+ green belts and black belts, and has helped complete 200+ projects with results that range between $50,000 and $8 million dollars in savings.
Tracy has a B.A. in English Literature from San Francisco State University and an MBA in Leadership and Managing Organizational Change from the Graziadio School of Business at Pepperdine University.
Tracy acquired her Black Belt certification from both GE in 1998 and her Master Black Belt Certification in 2007
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Jef has been providing training and consulting services in manufacturing, communication, computer systems, marketing and financial services for over 25 years. His primary expertise lies in performance improvement in the administrative, product development and manufacturing environments.
Currently Jef is the Lead Instructor for two Ford Motor Company Six Sigma programs; Six Sigma Leadership and Six Sigma Train-the-Trainer for Black Belts and Master Black Belts.
He is also delivering classes for Motorola University in Basic Statistics and Design of Experiments as well an Applied Statistics class for Urban Science (a marketing company).
For the prior ten years Jef focused on assisting companies in the design, development and implementation of Six Sigma programs. He has extensive experience in the delivery of DMAIC and Design for Six Sigma training.
Jef has an ability to take difficult concepts and deliver them in an understandable manner. His broad experience base enables him to draw on real life examples that connect well with various groups.
Jef also has extensive experience abroad; taking his Six Sigma training and consulting experience to the international divisions of major Fortune 500 companies in England, Sweden, Korea and Mexico.
Prior to becoming a full-time consultant and trainer, he spent four years with RWD Technologies where he was Chief Engineer and Director of Manufacturing Services. Jef has also worked for the National Center for Manufacturing Sciences (R&D), where he was the Manager of Technology Transfer, after working for Chrysler Corporation as the Supervisor of Manufacturing Training.
Jef is a certified Manufacturing Engineer (SME) and a Certified Reliability Engineer (ASQ), and has written and presented many papers on training and automation at international conferences. He holds B.S. and M.S. degrees from Central Michigan University.
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Bill Stieber, Ph.D., CSP is an internationally recognized business consultant, trainer, author and ASQ certified Six Sigma Black Belt.. A former Deming consultant, Bill's expertise over the last 20 years enables him to bring enormous wisdom and insight to his clients. By using entertaining and often musically-related metaphors (Bill plays saxophone and guitar), he delivers substantial value and always engages his audience, whether speaking to a full room or one-on-one.
In his assignments implementing Total Quality and Lean Six Sigma, he has trained and coached process improvement teams, facilitated the design of strategic plans, implemented behavioral and customer surveys and led training programs in a variety of process management concepts, including leadership practices, customer service, problem solving tools and team building. His experience crosses many industries, such as financial services, media, healthcare, pharmaceutical and chemicals, and touches many geographies, including North and South America, Europe and Asia.
Bill's career in organization development started at CIGNA Corporation. He served in a variety of posts including Regional Training and Personnel Director, Organization and Succession Planning Manager and Director of Corporate Management Development and Training. He also served as Director of Corporate Training and Development for an insurance brokerage in New York and as Vice President of Training and Development for a financial services division of Xerox Corporation. Prior to joining Pivotal, Bill served as an organization design and development consultant for AT&T Capital where he facilitated the complete redesign of two financial service units.
Bill has been recognized for his leadership in quality improvement and other large-scale improvement initiatives in numerous organizational settings. He has served as Senior Lead Examiner for the Pennsylvania Quality Leadership Award. He has a Ph.D. in Adult and Organization Development from Temple University, an MBA from LaSalle University and a BS in Education from the Pennsylvania State University.
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Elisabeth has provided process improvement consulting, training and design services to Fortune 100 companies for the past 20 years. Most recently she worked on the design and implementation of a Performance Management System for the Bahamas Telecommunications Company resulting in the alignment of strategic corporate goals with every layer of the company down to coordinated targets for front-line technicians.
Just prior to that she coached several improvement teams at Charles Schwab resulting in a 20% reduction in unnecessary account terminations, a 30% reduction in rework associated with on-line funds transfers, a 75% reduction in total account open cycle time from application to funding. In an ongoing effort, she has been a principal in the design and rollout of the first Lean/Six Sigma effort in the hospitality industry for Starwood Hotels and Resorts resulting in average benefits of $30 million per year from 2001-2008 for North America alone.
Elisabeth is the author of a business simulation used worldwide to gain buy-in and establish leadership awareness in the area of process improvement. Her clients include: Bahamas Telephone Company, BP, Charles Schwab, Cisco Systems, GE Capital, Fireman’s Fund Insurance, Ford, Federated Department Stores, Johnson & Johnson, Kodak, NBC, Northrup Grumman, Target, Raytheon, Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide, United Health Care, Volvo and Wells Fargo,.
Born in the UK, Elisabeth holds a bachelor’s degree in English with a concentration in Computer Science from Columbia University in New York City, NY. Elisabeth is GE certified Black Belt Trainer and a founding member of BCT (Boston Comedy Theater) specializing in improvisational techniques to foster organizational change efforts.
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Carolyn has helped design and implement effective Six Sigma and process improvement training for many top companies, including Calloway Golf, Cendant Corp, Cisco Systems, Clorox, Federated Logistics, GE Capital, Sears, Starwood Hotels and Sun Microsystems. She is an experienced executive and Black Belt workshop leader and is one of the best in the business in generating enthusiasm for Six Sigma concepts, providing keen insights into getting results.
Carolyn spent her early career at Texas Instruments, where she was an active member of the Quality Steering Committee for the Chemical Operations Department (COD). Some of her responsibilities included being a member of the Corporate Disaster Mgmt & Recovery Team, Corporate Training & Development Council, ISO 9000 COD team member, as well as providing training, coaching and organizational development in the Materials Division. Being certified in Change Management and quality process improvement led to many significant and measurable improvements in productivity and employee satisfaction.
Carolyn was a member of the first team of instructors launching Six Sigma at GE Capital, and she went on to develop several of the key DMAIC case studies still in use at GE today — in addition to training hundreds of Six Sigma Black Belts. In 2006, her Six Sigma expertise was instrumental in co-writing a White Paper related to electronic discovery: "Six Sigma in the Legal Department; Obtaining Measurable Quality Improvements in Discovery Management". This paper (presented at a Legal Tech Conference) helps to demonstrate groundbreaking proof that the DMAIC process can make significant changes in this aspect of the legal field.
Today, as Senior Consultant and Account Team Leader, Carolyn continues to be an integral part of the certification and implementation of Lean Six Sigma principles for a variety of clients.
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Ramya comes to Pivotal Resources with a diverse background in process improvement, marketing, promotions and business development. Her experience – in both Fortune 500 companies as well as technology start-ups – has included a number of successful national and regional change efforts.
Ramya started her career in the entertainment Industry, handling promotions for Sony Music in India. Her next stint was at Reliance Entertainment, a start-up that introduced broadband interactive television in India. Before joining Pivotal, Ramya served as a certified Black Belt with GE Capital where her role included process improvement, strategic planning, client interface and operations overview – as well as training and project mentoring. Her project work, involving resource optimization and core business consolidation, achieved close to $750,000 in savings.
With Pivotal, Ramya's work matches her diverse experience and includes project consulting and facilitation, product development and training. She has done extensive consulting work on a variety of projects for Cisco Systems, GMAC Insurance and several other clients. She also serves as Product Manager for Pivotal's Qualification and Certification services.
Ramya has a B.S. in Math, Physics & Chemistry from Osmania University, India, and earned her MBA from the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, India.
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Karen is an accomplished Industrial Engineer, Certified Six Sigma Black Belt and Lean professional with over ten years of cross functional experience in operational excellence, strategic planning and Six Sigma program design and deployment. Karen has provided expertise in continuous improvement methodologies to a diverse background of industries including Hospitality, Healthcare, Homebuilding and Manufacturing. Her passion to drive customer satisfaction through continuous improvement allows her to be successful with multiple levels of an organization, performing training, team facilitation, program and project management to achieve sustained results in dynamic environments.
Karen began her career in process improvement as an Industrial Engineer for Disney where she was a part of the development team for Disney’s California Adventure Theme Park in Anaheim, California. She has continued her career holding engineering and process improvement management positions for companies such as Shea Homes, SPX Corporation and Carolinas Healthcare System. While at Shea Homes, Karen worked with the National Association of Homebuilders Research Center as a process improvement and quality judge for the National Housing Quality Award. Most recently, Karen has been providing consulting services for the United States Postal Service performing organizational assessments, Lean Six Sigma training, Leadership and Green Belt coaching, and project execution. Karen is also an active member of the Institute of Industrial Engineering Professional Chapter in San Diego and partnered with the University of San Diego as a guest speaker for the Department of Industrial Engineering.
Karen received her B.S. in Industrial Engineering & Systems Integration from California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo and an MBA in Finance from California State University, San Marcos. She received her Six Sigma Black Belt from ASQ and her Lean Enterprise Certification from the Milwaukee School of Engineering and the University of Tennessee.
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Mark has provided Lean Sigma Consulting services to industrial and service organizations representing a wide variety of industries, including: Healthcare, Transportation, Distribution, Financial Services and Manufacturing. He has more than 25 years of experience in Manufacturing Management and Industrial Engineering. Specializing in Lean Sigma Enterprise solutions, he has led successful process improvement programs for many organizations across the North America. He is currently working with several Fortune 500 corporations using Lean Sigma Enterprise techniques in their transactional areas on projects as far reaching as hiring, quoting, and claims processes, in addition to, the more traditional manufacturing applications.
After leaving the traditional batch and queue world behind, Mark started his Lean Sigma journey in 1989 at Amdahl in Silicon Valley, where he successfully implemented Demand Flow Manufacturing (Lean) and helped achieve ISO 9001 certification. He continued to build and apply his expertise in operations by managing manufacturing operations for a progressive ambient lighting manufacturer in Berkeley, CA, and then as a consultant for NIST Manufacturing Extension Partnership in New York City and Northern California.
Mark holds a B.S. Degree in Industrial Management and is a member of the Association for Manufacturing Excellence (AME). He is also a former Chapter Chairman of the Society of Manufacturing Engineering (SME).
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George is a ASQ Certified Six Sigma Master Black Belt with broad expertise in such areas as mentoring, training, facilitating and application consulting in problem solving and Lean Six Sigma for Manufacturing and Service industries (Motorola). He also implemented Statistical Process Control (SPC) in the appliance (Siemens), healthcare (Kaiser Permanente),defense (US Navy, US Coast Guard), aerospace, automotive (Ford) and financial industries (Capital One, National City).
George gained his experience at Ford's Six Sigma where he trained Black and Green Belts and Ford's Global 8-Disciplines where he was in charge of the Team Oriented Problem Solving. He later became the Six Sigma Instructor for Motorola University and the Operational Excellence Instructor (Six Sigma for Service) for Washington Mutual. His expertise also includes Process Control Methods (SPC), Failure Mode & Effects Analysis (FMEA), Experimental Design (DOE), Parameter & Tolerance Design, QS-9000/ISO-9000 Assessment Survey and Quality Operating System (QOS).
George holds a Masters degree in Statistics from the University of Guelph, Ontario, Canada and is a Senior Member of the American Society for Quality and the Ohio Academy of Science. He is a Quality Assurance Professional since 1985 and is fluent in English, French and Hungarian.
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