Cheryl Janoski is an independent Baldrige trainer and coach. She served 20 years as a Baldrige Examiner at all levels and three years as a TNCPE judge. Cheryl served 30 years as a Department of the Army Civilian, applying the principles of Baldrige to the management and improvement of Army base operations. She holds a Bachelor's degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a Master's degree from Ball State University in Muncie, IN.

Born in Cuba, Tillie and her parents, Matilde and Alberto Hidalgo, escaped in 1961 to find freedom in the United States. Coming with only 10 pesos, her parents taught her resourcefulness and determination. They became U.S. citizens in 1969.

After graduating from the University of Cincinnati, Tillie was a pharmacist for 13 years before coming to BEST as vice president of operations. She became president/CEO in 2003 and created a Board of Advisors in 2005.
Tillie and her husband, Dave, have three daughters, two sons-in-law, and five grandchildren. She lives by her values, the 7 Fs: Faith, Family, Friends, Fitness, Financial Strength, Freedom and Fun.
Tillie is a member of St. Elizabeth Healthcare Board of Trustees and was a former board member of the United Way of Greater Cincinnati as well as Legatus.
 

Bill joined the Best Upon Request team in 2012, where he serves as president and chief operating officer. Bill’s focus is on strategy and the convergence of people and processes. He is passionate about leading Best Upon Request on a continuous improvement journey.

Bill began his career at Hitachi Automotive Products, U.S.A., where he spent 13 years developing as a leader, continuous improvement practitioner and executive. During this time, Bill led the development of systems, processes, and robust quality controls that drove his teams to the highest levels of success, profitability and quality recognition rewarded by major auto manufacturers like General Motors, Honda, Nissan and Toyota. 

BaldrigeCoach

Kay Kendall spent more than 20 years as a quality executive leading large-scale change initiatives across diverse industries. As CEO of BaldrigeCoach, she currently works with organizations coaching them on their journey toward Performance Excellence. BaldrigeCoach has worked with 23 organizations that have received the Baldrige Award, 36 organizations that have won their state program’s highest level award, and 18 Gold Award recipients of the AHCA/NCAL Quality Award. Kay served on the Panel of Judges for the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Program for three years. She continues as a Master Examiner, technical editor, and case study co-author.

Kay is the co-author of "The Executive Guide to Understanding and Implementing Baldrige in Healthcare: Evidence-Based Excellence® " and "Leading the Malcolm Baldrige Way: How World-Class Leaders Align Their Organization to Deliver Exceptional Results."

Glenn Bodinson, FACHE, founded BaldrigeCoach in 1989 to help organizations become more productive, profitable, and fun places to work through the power of Performance Excellence.  We help senior leaders become extraordinary leaders by using the Baldrige Excellence Framework to take their organization’s performance to the next level. He developed the Peaceful Pathway to Excellence to help organizations get started on their Performance Excellence journey. We help organizations gain and sustain a competitive advantage in their marketplace. By improving their most important processes and results, the organizations we partner with become “Award Worthy.”

Glenn has served as a Master Examiner for the Baldrige Award, and as a judge for the Texas Quality Award, the Southwest Alliance for Excellence and the AHCA/NCAL National Quality Award.  He is a Fellow of the American College of Healthcare Executives (FACHE).

Pete is responsible for directing Elevations’ strategic planning process, advancing enterprise business intelligence capabilities, championing a culture of innovation and directing deployment of the Baldrige Performance Excellence Program in pursuit of the credit union’s BHAG: “Audacious Excellence! P.S. We will win the Baldrige again.”

Prior to joining Elevations in 2008, Pete held a variety of analyst and leadership roles at the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City. He holds a bachelor’s degree in economics and finance from Colorado State University Pueblo and a Master of Business Administration from Benedictine College. In 2017, he achieved Certified Innovation Executive (CIE) status from the CUES Strategic Innovation Institute. Pete also serves as a member of the Board of Examiners for the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award and as a board member for Rocky Mountain Performance Excellence.

McClaskey Excellence Institute

David McClaskey is the President of the McClaskey Excellence Institute (formerly known as the Pal's Business Excellence Institute). The McClaskey Excellence institute inspires, enables, and supports leaders to create extraordinary organizations through operational excellence. It does this through teaching and consulting with organizations of all types on world-class management practices.

As a Baldrige expert and performance excellence consultant for more than 40 years, David has worked with thousands of organizations from every sector, including health care, service, small business, government, manufacturing, education, and non-profit. He works with organizations that want to be extraordinary. He has helped seven companies (including Ritz-Carlton) to win eight Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Awards; and assisted Florida Power and Light to be the first company outside of Japan to win the Deming Prize, Japan’s national quality award. David helped develop and deliver the original training for the Baldrige Board of Examiners in 1988. He served as a judge for the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award for three years and as a TNCPE judge for twelve years. In 2011 his outstanding leadership in the pursuit of performance excellence was recognized with the TNCPE Ned R. McWherter Leadership Award and by the American Society for Quality with its prestigious international E. L. Grant Award for the development and presentation of meritorious educational programs in quality management.

David holds both Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Industrial Engineering.

LBL Strategies

Randall Rollinson is President of LBL Strategies. LBL is a Registered Education Provider of the Association for Strategic Planning (ASP), the Project Management Institute (PMI) and a certified veteran owned business. He is a certified Strategic Management Professional (SMP) and an ASP Pioneer. In 2010, he coauthored and published a strategic management text book entitled Strategy in the 21st Century:  A Practical Strategic Management Process.

Since 1985, Randall has served more than 2600 clients in a wide range of industries with practical strategy facilitation, board development and performance management services.  He has a special focus on industry associations where governance issues are often a major consideration.  Over his career he has specialized in strategic management consulting, teaching and software development. His body of work includes the Mastering Strategy: Strategic Management Performance Certification Program, which won the 2001 Exemplar Award from the International Association for Continuing Education and Training, as an “exemplary, outstanding results-oriented program.” This live and online education program is now offered in partnership with George Washington University, Center for Excellence in Public Leadership to help management professionals expand their knowledge, skills and provide a pathway to ASP certification. 

Randall holds an MBA in Management from DePaul University, a master’s degree in rehabilitation counselling and a bachelor’s degree in psychology from Southern Illinois University.  He has taken advanced certificate level training from DePaul University in executive information systems and project management. He completed a certificate program in international trade at the World Trade Center of Illinois in 2011. He is a certified Balanced Scorecard Professional receiving his certification from George Washington University, College of Professional Studies.  He completed an Advanced Measurement Certification program from the Balanced Scorecard Institute. He is an active member of the Chicagoland PMI Chapter and a former member of the Chapter’s Executive Council.

He is a past President of the Norwood Seniors Network.  He is a Vietnam veteran.

He enjoys listening, facilitating, writing, teaching and delivering on promises made to LBL’s customers and strategic partners.  He has a primary interest in helping leaders accept the reality of climate change. In his spare time, he enjoys working out, traveling, water skiing and family.

Heather Schoch is a Performance Excellence Consultant specializing in the Baldrige Framework, performance metrics and scorecards, operational planning, and process improvement. She is a TNCPE veteran of 15 years, serving as a TNCPE and Baldrige examiner, TNCPE team leader, applicant, member of the Panel of Judges, and Chief Operations Officer of the organization. In 2009, Heather received TNCPE’s Champion of Excellence Award for leading CGS’s excellence journey.

Heather began her relationship with Baldrige as the Business Excellence Leader at CIGNA Government Services with responsibility for all quality management, strategic planning, Balanced Scorecard, and project management initiatives. In this role she ultimately led the organization to achieve the prestigious Excellence Award for the state of Tennessee in 2010. After CGS, Heather joined the TNCPE workforce as the Award Program Manager and later became the COO.

Heather’s recent accomplishments include consulting with the City of Germantown on their 2019 Baldrige application, which resulted in them receiving the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award on their first attempt. She works with many other Tennessee organizations at all levels of the TNCPE program. Heather graduated from Vanderbilt University with a Bachelor's Degree in Mathematics.

Bob joined the Baldrige Program in 1997 and after serving in numerous roles over the years was named Deputy Director in 2011 and Director in 2013. Since then, Bob has been focused on strengthening strategic partnerships, expanding the reach and impact of Baldrige, providing new and improved products and services, ensuring efficient and effective operations, and planning for strategic capability and capacity needs. Bob’s background in owning and managing small businesses and his MBA from the University of Maryland have helped him transform the Baldrige Program and lead it through extraordinary challenges after the loss of federal funding.

In 2012, I had my Baldrige epiphany. My 30-year career as a small business executive was a mixture of many triumphs and some tribulations. I found myself starting over after spending $20 million of other people’s money and having nothing to show for it. By chance, I attended my first Baldrige conference, a local one, just like the TNCPE conference. That conference became my door to performance excellence. It opened my eyes to the world of continuous improvement and led me to the Baldrige criteria. It began my study of learning organizations, first as a Baldrige examiner and today as the Executive Director of Rocky Mountain Performance Excellence. I quickly realized the power in the criteria questions and have dedicated the rest of my career to finding ways to make the criteria easier to understand and faster to results. Join me and several of Rocky Mountain Performance Excellence’s role model organizations as we explore “Achieving and Sustaining Excellence”.

Stephanie Norling has been Executive Director of Communities of Excellence 2026 since 2014.  In this role Stephanie has participated in the development of the Communities of Excellence Criteria, adapted from the Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence and launched a National Learning Collaborative of communities to support their use of the framework.  She also serves as a Learning Collaborative faculty and mentors several of the 21 communities currently participating.   After graduating with a BA in Anthropology from Tufts University in 1999, Stephanie joined the Institute for Healthcare Improvement in Boston as a Project Coordinator.  In 2001 Stephanie moved to San Diego, CA and worked for 12 years at the San Diego Zoo and Safari Park, first in the Operations Department and later taking a lead role in the Elephant Department at the San Diego Zoo Safari Park.  In 2012 Stephanie graduated from the University of San Diego with a Master’s in Business Administration and a Certificate in Nonprofit Management.  Stephanie also participated as a National Baldrige Examiner for three years.

Chris Gray is the owner and CEO of Griffin Mechanical, LLC, a regional mechanical construction and service company. Griffin Mechanical was the 2018 recipient of the TNCPE Excellence Award, the culmination of an eight-year turnaround and improvement journey. 

Chris has spent over 12 years as a member of the TNCPE Board of Examiners, serving as team member, team leader, and on the Panel of Judges.  

Chris holds an MBA from Belmont University's Jack C. Massey School of Business and a BA from Penn State University. He lives in Brentwood, TN with his wife Jen and two daughters. 

Jay Arthur is the author of “Lean Six Sigma Demystified,” “Lean Six Sigma for Hospitals” and is the President and CEO of KnowWare International, as well as the software developer of QI Macros.

Quality Improvement has been a longstanding passion of Jay’s. His philosophy of improvement – Agile Lean Six Sigma – teaches that you don’t need to be a statistician to implement effective improvement; a data-driven approach will quickly identify improvement targets. With Agile Lean Six Sigma, Jay teaches people how to solve operational problems reducing delay, defects and deviation in one day using Excel and the “Magnificent Seven Tools of Lean Six Sigma, ” all without the need for big budgets or big data.

Dr. Lighter currently serves as Professor and core faculty for the Physicians’ Executive MBA program at the University of Tennessee and as Director of The Institute for Healthcare Quality Research and Education where he works with organizations to improve quality management using techniques like Lean Six Sigma, the Baldrige Performance Excellence Program management framework, and advanced information technologies.  As a member of the Review Oversite Committee of the National Committee on Quality Assurance (NCQA), he helps assess health plans and other healthcare quality organizations using national standards for performance improvement.  In addition to his academic pursuits, Dr. Lighter has also served as Corporate Medical Director at Caris Healthcare in Knoxville from 2014 – 2017, and from 2008–10, he served as Vice President for Quality at WellCare Health Plans.  Between 2001–09 and again from 2010-12, Dr. Lighter served as the Chief Quality Officer for the Shriners Hospitals for Children, a 22 hospital system, where he worked in the areas of medical staff performance and compensation, leadership training, and medical affairs strategic planning.   In 2012, Dr. Lighter was appointed to a three-year term as a Judge for the Malcolm Baldrige Performance Excellence Program, and he is also active in the Tennessee Center for Performance Excellence program, serving in several different capacities, including examiner, trainer, judge, and score-book reviewer.

Dr. Lighter’s over 40 years in the health care industry includes academic and private practice in pediatrics, man-aged care leadership roles, Medicaid and Medicare quality management programs, and medical missionary work. In addition to these medical leadership positions, Dr. Lighter has authored over 75 articles and chapters, as well as three widely used textbooks on health care quality improvement, the most recent published in 2013.  Over the course of his career, Dr. Lighter has led the formation of two IPAs and three HMOs, and development of a university Physician-Hospital Organization.  He has also been a consultant to the Board of the American Academy of Pediatrics on medical informatics and has received the Academy’s highest informatics award.  

Tamera's career has been marked by key leadership and quality management positions in the banking and healthcare industries.

Prior to serving as President and CEO, Tamera served in various volunteer roles within TNCPE and the Baldrige organization. Her experience includes serving on the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award Board of Examiners, the TNCPE Board of Examiners, and the TNCPE Panel of Judges. In 2009, she became the first recipient of the TNCPE Champion of Excellence Award.

Before coming to TNCPE, Tamera served as Vice President for Quality and Performance Improvement for TNCPE’s first three-time Excellence Award winner, Mountain States Health Alliance (now Ballad Health). Prior to her position with Ballad Health, she was an operations supervisor and quality manager for Citigroup.

Tamera is an ASQ Certified Quality Manager, NAHQ Certified Professional in Healthcare Quality, and has a BS degree from Tusculum College.

Jim Keiffer is President of Keiffer Energy and Management Consulting and has over 40 years of experience in the natural gas and electricity industry. Jim retired from TVA in October 2014 and has focused his consulting business within the energy industry and providing services in strategic planning, marketing and customer service, energy efficiency programs and overall management consulting.

Jim began his TVA career in 1997 as Vice President of Marketing, responsible for growing the Energy Right program as well as TVA’s Energy Services Co. Keiffer also served as GM of the Middle Tennessee Customer Service District as well as GM of Customer Strategy and Support.

Before joining TVA in August 1997, Keiffer worked in both the regulated and unregulated subsidiaries of CNG, where he served as Vice President of Marketing, Vice President of Supply, and Vice President of Human Resources.

Keiffer holds a B.S. degree in civil engineering from West Virginia Institute of Technology and an MBA from West Virginia University.  He has four children and one grandson.