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🎤Morning keynote
Michael B. Tatham
President & CEO, Tatham Company
Biography
Michael has collaborated with world-renowned leaders for over 18 years, using his expertise to help them unite their teams to tackle their industry’s most significant obstacles. His diverse clientele has included organizations such as NASA, Walmart, Bank of America, HP, and the US Airforce. Michael has instilled organizational agility and adaptability in his clients by offering a complete set of tools necessary to drive growth in the form of mindset, methodology, and systems. What sets Michael apart from your traditional coach is his ability to gather cross-functional organizational buy-in swiftly, leading to the development of a competitive operating rhythm that initiates and drives organizational change sustainably. Beyond his work, Michael balances his passions for flying, boxing, basketball, golf, and technology while being a devoted father to four children.
Session Description
Tatham Company President & CEO Michael will deliver our exciting opening keynote, focusing on improving efficiencies through organizational change methodologies similar to Lean. His insights will energize and challenge us to rethink how we drive excellence in our institutions.
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🎤 Dr. Tammi Sinha
Director of Undergraduate Studies SBS, Senior Lecturer Operations Management
University of Surrey
Dr. Sinha will share insights on strategic planning in higher education using the Lean Hoshin Kanri method. Her expertise will guide us in aligning strategy with execution for meaningful impact
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🎤 Dr. Eric Olsen
Professor, Industrial Technology
Cal Poly Director, Central Coast Lean
Lead, Future People at Work
What if the biggest challenges facing your continuous improvement work aren’t unique to your institution—but universal across all sectors? Join an interactive exploration of four critical themes threatening the future of CI: succession planning, time poverty, organizational silos, and AI integration. This isn’t a lecture—it’s a collaborative session where your insights become part of a growing international movement. Leave with connections, frameworks, and access to a community of 100+ practitioners working together to solve these challenges.
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🎤Afternoon keynote
Olga Kipnis, MSc., CPCC
Assistant Dean for Organizational Excellence, Washington University in St. Louis
Biography
Olga is a blend — like a smoothie — of cultures, disciplines, and experiences, shaped by more than 25 years of leading institutional change. Between her master’s in Management of IT and her Professional Certified Coach credential from the International Coaching Federation, she leverages diverse skills to help individuals and teams live fully and sustain high performance with greater ease.
Session Description
The Strongest Process Starts Within: Quality In, Quality Out explores how managing our mind and body creates the “quality inputs” behind every successful output.
In Lean terms, we can’t expect “quality output” if our “inputs” are clouded as we navigate challenges — both external (and we have plenty) and internal, simply by living our lives.
If we want better results — anywhere in our lives — let’s begin with deeper awareness of how we can manage our mind and how our body can help
Learning Objectives:
- Recognize how inner filters affect performance, well-being, and relationships.
- Apply “quality input” thinking and practical tools to maintain a more resourceful state.
- Strengthen communication skills grounded in awareness and respect — for others and for yourself.
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🎤 Kristine Antony
Business Analyst
University of Toronto
To streamline onboarding and orientation within the Department of Information Security at the University of Toronto, we leveraged AI-driven tool, Microsoft Power Automate, to build a more efficient and user-friendly process. This solution offers a seamless experience for both managers and new hires, with team-specific orientation workflows tailored for success. As a result, administrative tasks have been reduced by 80% and established a scalable framework now being adopted by other departments and faculties across the university. This presentation will share our implementation journey, lessons learned, and strategies for scaling AI-supported onboarding in higher education.
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🗣️CIO Fireside Roundtable
Led by Brian Stewart, CIO of Simon Fraser University, this interactive session will wrap up the day with a collaborative discussion on the future of operational excellence in Higher Education. We welcome our panel of leaders:
Katie Tuck, Chief Information Officer, University of the Fraser Valley
“Technology is often the trigger for change; as CIO, I help the institution navigate that change by aligning systems, processes, and people so that UFV can continually adapt and turn technology investments into meaningful outcomes.”
Gary Doucette, Executive Advisor, Process Management, Acadia University
Gary fulfills a new role for Acadia, designed around the idea of finding and adjusting key processes that hinder productivity across the institution. Conceptually, this need has been recognized for several years. In June of this year the IT leaders gathered for 2 days of strategic planning and culture & leadership development. One of the initiatives born of that work was creating a centre of excellence for process improvement to serve the institution. The university senior leadership was taken with the idea, and in a short time created a role and transferred Gary from CIO to Process Management. Currently, it is one person using their experience and connections to build a program and begin to “Turn the wheel”. How far the program goes depends on how quickly the wheel turns.
John Kincaid, Executive Director Process Excellence and Transformation, University of Calgary