2010 Speakers

Steve is the founder of the Business Process Group (www.bpgroup.org) a global business club (originally formed 1992) exchanging ideas and best practice in Business Performance Management, Transformation and Process Improvement. He leads from the front and works with many of the leading fortune 500 companies as a mentor and coach specializing in the implementation of performance improvement, process change and transformation. An inspirational speaker and author of several books including “A Senior Executives guide to BPR”, “In Search of BPM Excellence”, “Thrive! How to Succeed in the Age of the Customer” and recently “Customer Expectation Management – Success without Exception” he is noted for his direct and pragmatic approach. Steve previously worked for Citibank where he led restructuring and business process transformation programs both in the US and Europe. Steve advises many boards and sits on the steering panel of the influential California based BPM Forum, a group of distinguished C-Level executives heading up Global 500 companies.

Effective January 4th, 2010 Beth serves as IRM’s VP, Business Process & Improvement (BPI) responsible for establishing a process-focused capability for the Company, promoting a culture of customer-centered process excellence, technology adaptation and performance metrics management. She will execute through Process Management Teams (PMTs) formed throughout the organization to identify and deliver on shared BPI goals. Beth and the PMTs will leverage various improvement methods such as Lean Six Sigma to optimize business process and BPMS capabilities to improve efficiency and service quality to customers and shareholders alike. BPI will be institutionalized as a core competency and discipline of IRM.

Prior to joining IRM, Beth spent 4 years as VP, Business Transformation at IBM Global Financing. Her organization’s mission was deployment of standard systems, assisting global process owners in deployment of standard processes, and optimizing workforce productivity and client satisfaction. Prior to IBM, Beth had a 24 year career with General Electric (GE) where she held a variety of Information Technology and Transformation executive positions; spanning CIO roles, Acquisition Integration, Global Program Management, and Six Sigma leadership, in which she is certified.

Douglas E. Burgess is senior vice president of Xerox’s Corporate Lean Six Sigma Operations. He was appointed to this position in August 2008. Burgess is responsible for the company’s Lean Six Sigma and Design for Lean Six Sigma strategy, deployment, training and business process improvement programs. He champions customer-facing and employee initiatives focused on driving new levels of business performance and results using industry-recognized methodologies. Prior to his current assignment, Burgess was vice president, Western Hemisphere Equipment Supply Chain, where he was responsible for the equipment supply chain operations supporting the direct and indirect channels in North and South America. He also was responsible for all aspects of equipment delivery including forecasting, purchasing, supply planning and product delivery of finished products to customers.

Since joining Xerox in 1979, Burgess has held various positions in quality, engineering and management for the company’s manufacturing and supply chain operations. In 1997, he was appointed as the executive assistant to the vice president of Worldwide Manufacturing Operations. In 2000, he was named vice president of the equipment supply chain for OEM products.

Chris Galante is Process Improvement Leader, Boeing Enterprise Lean Coach, and Employee Involvement Facilitator for CDG, a subsidiary of The Boeing Company. In these roles he promotes and teaches Lean+, Lean principles, and has led numerous Lean classes and hands-on workshops. He has extensive experience with proven metrics and substantial process improvements resulting from application of Lean practices in a number of diverse projects and work environments. Mr. Galante previously held positions in education and the U.S. Marine Corps.

Charles Faulkner is an international expert on modelling the knowledge and performance of exceptional individuals, teams and organizations. He does this by making practical applications of the latest research in cognitive neuroscience and linguistics. He works with leaders from the Silicon Valley to the City of London, with Fortune 50 executives and with privately held wealth. He is the co-author of the book NLP: The New Technology of Achievement and programs including: Success Mastery, Creating Irresistible Influence, Metaphors of Identity as well as the DVD NLP in Action and the tools of Trimurti. He is featured in The New Market Wizards, The Intuitive Trader, Trend Following and other publications for his work with traders, fund managers and other the high-risk decision-makers. He has lectured and led courses on four continents including: The Chicago Board of Trade, University of Chicago Graham School, Columbia College, Sorbonne MBA Program, London School of Economics, and the House of Commons, UK. A Principal in Influential Communications, Inc., Chicago, his passion these days is showing how our everyday language shapes what we think, and the decisions we make, and what we can do about it.

With his passion for helping disadvantaged families, Dan joined the New York State (NYS) Office of Temporary and Disability Assistance (OTDA) as the Chief Information Officer in June 2007. Under his leadership, OTDA launched the innovative myBenefits.ny.gov citizen portal in May 2008 to provide low-income families self-service Internet access to various economic support and health insurance programs. For this achievement, Dan was named the NYS Public CIO of the Year in September 2008 and the Computerworld Premier 100 IT Leaders in 2010. He currently chairs the e-Government technical committee for the NYS Broadband Council established by the Governor. Dan is a certified Six Sigma Black Belt and earned a Ph.D. degree in Aerospace Engineering. Prior to his public service, Dan worked at GE, Boeing and Rockwell International.

Ýr Gunnarsdóttir uses her decade of experience around Lean Management in her role as VP Lean Operations at Nimbus and as a Lead consultant within the Lean Operations Office at Toyota Motor Europe. Ýr's vast experience in leading process & performance management and business strategy initiatives allows her to enhance and align strategy, business planning and KPIs with the reality of daily operations.

Her key responsibility is to deliver Operational Excellence focusing on tasks that include; executing standard process improvement methodology, creating a Kaizen platform for continuous improvement and increasing Lean thinking and acting company wide.

Thomas Kedrowski is senior vice president, supply chain and operations for PolyOne Corporation, the world’s premier provider of specialty polymer materials, services and solutions. In line with the Operational Excellence pillar of the company’s strategic priorities, he has global responsibility for developing and implementing plans and strategies that drive improvement in manufacturing, supply chain, and overall business performance.

Mr. Kedrowski, who joined PolyOne in 2007, is an experienced global leader with a strong background in manufacturing, supply chain strategy and Lean Six Sigma implementation, gained during 24 years with H.B. Fuller Company.

He began his career at H.B. Fuller as a chemist and applications engineer, and advanced to several executive-level operations and business leader positions, both domestically and internationally. He also held both regional and global general manager roles in Asia Pacific and Europe for specialty businesses. In addition, he served as vice president of global operations and Lean Six Sigma deployment champion. His work experience has been equally balanced between commercial and operations roles.

Rochelle joined Harris in July 2007, during the initiation of the Business Operations Department, with a concentrated focus on process improvements. She has led and served as a mentor for projects supporting Fixed Assets, Payroll, Time and Labor, Accounts Payable and Travel Reimbursement.

Rochelle has managed projects in multiple industries including Shared Services, Call Center Operations and Information Services. She is a certified Project Management Professional (PMP) attaining her credentials from the internationally recognized Project Management Institute. She is a Lean Six Sigma Green Belt and has conducted training, provided mentoring and contributed content for curriculum development. Rochelle holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Accounting and has attended and conducted training in diverse disciplines including Organizational Development, Customer Service, Process Optimization and Employee Relations. Rochelle serves on the Board of Directors for the Project Management Institute (PMI) Space Coast Chapter.

Jason joined DTCC in February 2007 and is a Certified Master Black Belt, and certified Florida Sterling Examiner. Jason received his Black Belt certification through Arizona State University's Six Sigma Academy chaired by Mikel Harry. In 2004, he also received an MBA from the W. P. Carey school of business at ASU, and holds a Bachelors of Science in Chemistry. He has held positions from quality technician, through Senior Manufacturing Engineer while previously working in high technology manufacturing for medical devices at General Electric, as well as semiconductor manufacturing at Microchip Technology Inc, and Sumco Materials. Jason has also done consulting for Lean Operations in various companies from furniture manufacturing, lumber mills, and machine shops, to warehousing and document management. Jason also has a strong background in Kaizen facilitation, conflict resolution, team building and negotiations.

Jim Lichtenthal joined Kennedy Space Center in 1987 as a propellants and life support design engineer. He transitioned to NASA’s Safety and Mission Assurance organization in 1991, where he worked on several quality improvement projects, mostly related to the Space Shuttle Program. In 1997 he joined what it today know as NASA’s Management Integration Office, which is responsible for management systems, strategic planning and implementation, and program and project management. The Management Integration team at KSC has implemented a process-based approach at KSC and the staff serves as an enabling function to the Center for process development, measurement, and improvement, and develops and maintains the infrastructure of KSC’s management system. Jim’s primary responsibility is to maintain KSC’s process architecture and is currently the lead for KSC NASA’s business process modeling efforts. Jim Lichtenthal graduated from the State University of New York at Buffalo in 1985 with a bachelor of science in Chemical Engineering, and in 1991 he earned a Master’s degree in Industrial Engineering from the University of Central Florida.

Sebastian W. Fleisman is the winner of the IQPC's Process Excellence Honorary Award as the Deployment Leader of the Year 2010. He holds bachelor’s and master’s Management degrees, is a certified Quality Auditor Leader from the Georgia Institute of Technology and has been dedicated to Quality and Business Process Management since 14 years ago. Prior to get specialized in the Oil & Gas industry he served in the Steven Spielberg’s VHF Foundation and as Process Improvement Leader at Citibank. He got renowned because of leading the 5 years BPM/Lean Program in Repsol YPF ‘s Exploration and Production business achieving outstanding results as he got YPF develop into an excellent operator in mature oil and gas fields. After enhancing the upstream business, he was appointed as the YPF Quality and Process Officer to coordinate a company-wide BPM/Lean Program which aims to transform the entire business from the exploration, production, refining, logistic and marketing. Based in Buenos Aires, Argentina, he shares his experiences worldwide giving public and corporate lectures in the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Spain, the U.S.A., Uruguay, Colombia and Brazil.

Steve Melville is a seasoned, innovative enterprise architect who believes the success of an architecture should be measured by the business value it delivers. He recently joined Oracle Corporation as part of its acquisition of Sun Microsystems. Prior to the acquisition, he had overall design responsibility for the IBIS project -- believed to be one of the largest CRM/ERP implementations ever attempted.

He has a successful track record developing, articulating and driving enterprise business architectures and strategies for Fortune 500 organizations and more than twenty years experience in the software industry as a developer, technical lead, architect, project manager, and director for both business applications as well as RDBMS and OODBMS products.

His technical expertise includes enterprise business architecture, enterprise architecture, requirements management, use case modeling, distributed systems design, object-oriented analysis and design , business process engineering , database management systems design and use, as well as a variety of software development processes and methods.

Eric leads the Process Improvement CoE within Business Transformation & Technology Operations and is responsible to drive process improvements across Operations and IT teams (over 10,000 professionals). In addition to leading a team of approximately 50 Master Black Belts & Black Belts across Canada, he oversees the development, delivery and certification of all Lean Six Sigma training. Within the first year of deploying Lean Six Sigma, the CoE delivered hard savings exceeding overall program costs and within the second year is well positioned to deliver multiple times the bottom line savings. Leveraging a fair process engagement approach, the team has been very successful in engaging over 800 front line team members in one year through the delivery of breakthrough process improvements/ Prior to TELUS, Eric was involved in and led the deployment of process improvement programs in 4 distinct sectors including Investment Banking, Logistics and Airlines

With 29 years of Executive Coaching experience in the field of Applied Behavioral Science (ABS). She has worked with firms like Chevron, Vale, Kraft International, Elkay Manufacturing and Bell Canada, focusing on sustainable improvement to performance indicators such as Reliability, Safety, Cycle Time, Cost, and Quality.

CLG helps leaders and Business Process Excellence practitioners identify the High-Impact BehaviorsSM required to deploy and sustain the organization’s performance improvement outcomes, recognizing that each leader, team and employee’s behavior is a function of a unique work environment. Annemarie has focused on the design and application of ABS tools and methodologies to support clients wanting to increase Business Process Improvement Program financial contribution, and leadership involvement & ownership for Program effectiveness.

CLG’s application of Applied Behavioral Science in the work environment accelerates and sustains change as a result of performance improvement methodologies through the planned analysis and application of Behavior Change Plans. Annemarie supports leaders and Business Process Excellence practitioners as they learn how to analyze and shape behavior. Leaders at all levels can plan how best to elicit and reinforce High-Impact BehaviorsSM that will accelerate deployment and sustain the impact of performance improvement solutions.

Jim Cosco is Vice President and chief quality officer for Motorola Home & Networks Mobility (H&NM). He is responsible for leading quality, customer loyalty and business process improvement initiatives for H&NM, including the Customer Loyalty program, TL 9000 certification, M-Gates and Lean/Six Sigma. He drives a quality culture that delivers greater customer satisfaction and improved financial results.

Cosco joined Motorola in February 2008 from Washington Mutual Bank (WAMU) where he was senior vice president of Retail Bank Operational Strategy. He held several senior-level positions at WAMU and was responsible for the entire corporate process improvement (Lean/Six Sigma) program. The program enabled the company to dramatically improve its customer experience, quality and efficiency. Prior to financial services, Cosco spent 10 years in the United States Air Force and nine years with AlliedSignal/Honeywell Aerospace where he held various positions of increased responsibility with engineering, manufacturing, quality and process improvement and operations leadership concentration.

Cosco has over 24 years experience managing and fundamentally improving operations in leading companies within the defense and aerospace manufacturing and financial services industries. He is a certified Six Sigma Master Black Belt and Lean expert and has designed and deployed continual process improvement programs at several major public companies.

Tiran Dagan is the Director for NBC Universal's East Coast Strategic Initiatives & Analysis (SIA), NBC’s internal consulting arm, engaged by business leaders to drive down costs, reduce cycle time and waste and support strategic vision for enterprise operations & growth.

Tiran leads internal strategic consulting initiatives across digital platforms, distribution, ad sales, production and news. With a strong background in operations and technology, the group transforms both day to day operations and helps senior leadership materialize long term strategies. A passionate digital strategy professional, Tiran has worked across several digital properties to transform product lineup, change organizational structure and streamline operations.

Chris S. Schweighardt is a Business Process Leader for Honeywell International. His current role supports the Corporate Procurement Transformation effort in which he leads strategic-level change management & process improvement initiatives across the company global-wide. Mr. Schweighardt is a certified Six Sigma Lean Expert, Black Belt, PMP, and has authored articles on the subject of process improvement.

Prior to his current role, Mr. Schweighardt served as Quality Manager of Lean Six Sigma Projects in the Honeywell Aerospace division, Business Process Manager & Controller for United Airlines, Program Manager for Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC), and had various roles in the United States Air Force including Quality Assurance Officer, Program Manager, Chief of Logistics, and Acquisitions Officer.

Mr. Schweighardt received a bachelor’s of science degree from the United States Air Force Academy and an MBA from the Graziadio School of Business at Pepperdine University. Mr. Schweighardt is currently based out of Los Angeles, California.

A graduate of the University of New Orleans and native to the city, Spring Garcia offers a unique perspective gleaned from wide-ranging experience encompassing everything from small business ownership to corporate wholesale banking. Over the last 13 years, she worked for three prominent Fortune 500 companies and gained invaluable knowledge of business process management, relational database design, and database analysis and marketing as well as customer relationship management. Currently, Ms. Garcia is employed by the Louisiana Office of Community Development Disaster Recovery Unit, which administers a 750 million dollar grant from the federal government, the largest mitigation project in U.S. history, to help victims of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita prepare their homes against future flood and wind disasters.

A dynamic and passionate public speaker, Ms. Garcia has presented programs at the Institute for International Research Seminar in Washington, D.C and Thompson Financial Services Seminar in Las Vegas, Nevada.