Biography

José Pires serves as the Global Excellence & Innovation (E&I) Leader for Andeavor Corporation, where he oversees the global identification, prioritization and execution of mission critical business improvements and innovations that add value to the company, business partners and external clients in multiple markets.

Prior to his current role, Pires held Excellence and Innovation leadership positions in large, global companies in the electronics (Sony), semiconductor (Cymer-ASML), food (Nestlé) and infrastructure (Black & Veatch) industries. Throughout his career, Pires developed and refined E&I as an award winning program for innovation, leadership development, strategy execution and value creation globally.

Pires is an advisory board leader and keynote speaker for several global conferences on innovation, operational excellence, leadership development, strategy execution, business transformation, customer engagement and growth acceleration.

He holds a Bachelor in Engineering Physics from the University of Kansas and a Master in Business Administration focused in Investment Banking and Entrepreneurship from the University of San Diego.

Biography

Biography

Biography

Jen currently works in the Renewable Energy division of GE as the Americas Lean Regional Director. She is part of a global team supporting sites in continuous improvement in safety, quality, delivery, and productivity.

Jen has been a team member in five other manufacturing companies in the Golf Car, Refrigeration, Sheet Metal, Chemical and Aviation industries.  Her roles while with these companies included Manufacturing Engineer, ME Manager, Project Engineer, and Lean Six Sigma Manager. 

Jen holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Mechanical Engineering from the United States Military Academy at West Point and a Master of Science degree in Engineering Systems Management from Texas A&M University.     

She resides in Atlanta, GA where she enjoys golf, tennis, Crossfit, softball, and watching most sporting events.

Biography

Brent Williams is Director of Lean Six Sigma for enterprise corporate functions and has been at McKesson six years. Brent leads a team to consult, identify and manage process improvement initiatives by advancing the Six Sigma capabilities across McKesson's corporate functions, a $1B+ shared service. The team's mission: Increase the value of Corporate Functions services back to the business by improving operational excellence and reducing costs. During his tenure, the Corporate Functions have had the highest annual Six Sigma savings since the inception of the program.

Brent has 30+ years' experience launching new services and improving existing services to add value to the customer. He has had leadership roles in manufacturing, non-profit, and technology businesses with a focus on the shared services domains. He was an early adopter of Scrum agile methodology deploying it at an enterprise level in 2009 and is currently aligning Lean Six Sigma service with the SAFe framework now being used by McKesson technology. Brent holds an undergraduate degree in mechanical engineering from Texas A&M, a masters in biomedical engineering from the University of Virginia, and an MBA from Georgia State University.

Biography

Padmini Nidumolu is the Co-founder of Lean In Agile for women in Lean and Agile spaces to amplify the voices of women and celebrate the journeys of thought leaders. She is an Enterprise Agile Coach and an Agile community leader. She is a two times TEDx speaker and a frequent speaker at various Agile, Lean, operational excellence and business transformation conferences. She is a certified Business Agility Strategist and a certified trainer in several Agile and Scaled Agile courses. She is also a passionate STEM coach for several school teams and a huge proponent of women in STEM.

Biography

Biography

Adam Lawrence is the Managing Partner of Process Improvement Partners, LLC. Adam has 30+ years of experience in process improvement activities, targeted at manufacturing and business processes. Having facilitated 250+ Kaizen events in multiple industries around the world, Adam aligns with leadership, engages teams, and creates sustainable results. 

Adam has mastered the use of many different process improvement methodologies over his career, allowing him to identify the best strategy for each organization’s goals and objectives. Adam develops sessions that are fun, engaging, and laser-focused on helping teams win.

Married to his wonderful wife for over 28 years, Peggy, together they have one son (who is also the business’s IT department). Growing up in the Washington DC area, Adam received his BS in Industrial Engineering from Virginia Tech and is mostly a self-taught Lean practitioner, with certifications from the University of Michigan. He enjoys time with family and friends, loud music, traveling, the many great clients he has worked with (his extended family), and his many business adventures.

Biography

Over two decades of experience building multi-stakeholder consultative relationships, managing full lifecycle projects, and executing strategies to grow, improve and innovate Fortune 500 businesses using process and technology as conduits to empower people and increase profitability.

A deep sustainability and corporate social responsibility advocate, with a pronounced commitment to transformative change in these times of environmental and social crises, which manifests in research, advisory & management consulting, leadership coaching, writing, public speaking and more.

 Barbara has worked with a wide range of businesses including Fortune 500 global enterprises, creating outstanding results through a rare combination of conventional change consulting approaches and cutting-edge innovations leveraging her years of experience in the business and technology arenas and her skills as a Six Sigma black belt in process engineering. She designs, develops and implements systems that consistently deliver quality results, improving the triple bottom-line [people, planet and profit].

Through strategic advisory consulting and customized seminars, Barbara assists individuals and organizations with driving an internal ethos of continuous improvement, one person and process at a time.