John Shook is a Senior Advisor for the Lean Enterprise Institute and Lean Global Network. He is internationally recognized as one of the foremost authorities on lean management and organizational transformation. A former Toyota manager, Shook spent more than a decade in Japan and the United States helping Toyota transfer its production, engineering, and management systems globally, including to the NUMMI joint venture in California. During his time at Toyota headquarters, he became the company’s first American kacho (manager) in Japan — a groundbreaking achievement that reflected his deep understanding of the Toyota Production System.

Following his Toyota career, Shook became a leading voice in the global lean movement as Chairman and CEO of the Lean Enterprise Institute, where he helped organizations across industries apply lean principles to improve performance, problem solving, and leadership development. He is co-author of influential books including Learning to See, which introduced value-stream mapping to a global audience, and Managing to Learn, a widely respected guide to the A3 management and coaching process.

An industrial anthropologist by training, Shook is known for combining practical operational expertise with a deep understanding of culture, learning, and human systems. Through his writing, teaching, and keynote presentations around the world, he has inspired leaders to create organizations centered on continuous improvement, respect for people, and customer value.

Steven Spear is an organizational theorist, educator, author, advisor, and patent holder, and software startup founder. His work sits at the intersection of operations, innovation, systems thinking, and organizational learning. He has helped world-class organizations across industry, government, defense, and healthcare improve performance, accelerate innovation, and build stronger operating systems.

He helped architect both the Alcoa Business System and DTE’s operating system, generating recurring savings while improving safety, quality, and other key outcomes.

In healthcare, his work has helped reduce patient complications, increase capacity, and ease staff burden. At Pittsburgh’s Women’s Center, his methods helped reduce the time required to get hotline callers settled and safe from four days to four hours.

Steve is an award-winning author whose publications have influenced multiple fields. His books include Wiring the Winning Organization, coauthored with Gene Kim, and The High Velocity Edge, both recipients of the Philip Crosby Medal from AME; his work has also earned multiple Shingo Prizes. His Harvard Business Review article, “Decoding the DNA of the Toyota Production System,” is considered a foundational piece in lean manufacturing, and “Fixing Healthcare from the Inside, Today” received an HBR McKinsey Award.

His writing has appeared in Harvard Business Review, Sloan Management Review, Proceedings of the U.S. Naval Institute, Annals of Internal Medicine, Academic Medicine, Health Services Research, The New York Times, The Boston Globe, and USA Today, among others.

Steve earned his doctorate at Harvard, master’s degrees in mechanical engineering and management from MIT; and a bachelor’s degree from Princeton. He is a senior lecturer at MIT Sloan, a senior fellow at the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, founder of See to Solve, and a board member of the Greater Boston Manufacturing Partnership and NE ADL.

Dorothy Hung is Director of the Center for Lean Engagement & Research (CLEAR) in the Division of Health Policy and Management at the University of California, Berkeley School of Public Health. For two decades, Dr. Hung’s research has focused on system transformations to deliver high quality, high value U.S. health care. This includes a deep research portfolio on Lean performance improvement and its implementation, impact, scaling, and sustainment in acute care and ambulatory settings. Dr. Hung served as Principal Investigator of an R01 award, “Impact of LEAN Management on Primary Care Efficiency, Affordability, and the Patient Experience,” funded by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. She also led mixed methods evaluations of lean workflow redesigns for interdisciplinary teams in the ED, hospital inpatient and outpatient primary and specialty care clinics, and an AHRQ ACTION II (Accelerating Change and Transformation in Organizations and Networks) study of contextual factors impacting the spread of lean across a large ambulatory care system at Sutter Health in Northern California.  Dr. Hung was previously a faculty member at Columbia University School of Public Health in New York City, and affiliated faculty at UCSF Institute for Health Policy Studies. She holds a Ph.D. in Health Services & Policy Analysis and an M.A. in Political Science from UC Berkeley. Dr. Hung also holds a Master’s degree in Public Health from the University of Minnesota and a Bachelor’s degree from Stanford University.

Stephen Shortell is the Blue Cross of California Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Health Policy and Management and Professor Emeritus of Organization Behavior at the School of Public Health and Haas School of Business at the University of California-Berkeley where he also founded the Center for Healthcare Organizational and Innovation Research (CHOIR). From 2002 to 2013 he served as Dean of the School of Public Health at Berkeley. A leading health care scholar, Dr. Shortell and his colleagues have received numerous awards for their research examining the performance of integrated delivery systems; the organizational factors associated with quality and outcomes of care; and the factors associated with the adoption of evidence-based processes for treating patients with chronic illness. He has conducted research on patient engagement and the performance of Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs). He is an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine and a recent recipient of the AHA/HRET TRUST Visionary Leadership Award.

William Huen is the Chief of Strategic and Performance Innovation, San Francisco Department of Public Health (SFDPH),

In this role, William partners with the executive team to lead the strategic direction of SFDPH. Will also establishes direction for the SFDPH Kaizen Promotion Office and departmental improvement partners, coordinating department-wide lean and performance improvement activities while fostering an organizational culture of improvement.

Will previously served as Associate Chief Medical Officer for Quality and Lean at Zuckerberg San Francisco General and is a UCSF Clinical Professor and is passionate about improving health and delivering high quality care with compassion and respect.

Will is experienced in leading, coaching, and teaching mission and data-driven executive and interdisciplinary teams in quality improvement, health equity improvement, strategic deployment, Lean transformation, A3 Thinking problem solving and care for vulnerable populations.

Tara Cohen is the Director of Surgical Safety and Human Factors Research in the Department of Surgery and Director of Simulation Research in the Department of Academic Affairs at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, California. She is a research scientist and associate professor in the department of surgery and is the co-chair of the simulation and human factors research committee at the medical center. In 2017, she earned her doctorate in human factors from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach, Florida. Her research interests involve understanding how human behavior plays a role in complex systems and she seeks to identify solutions aimed to increase safety and efficiency in healthcare. Dr. Cohen has received funding to study the impact of technology integration in surgery and patient experience. She is the secretary of the Society for Surgical Ergonomics, Co-Chair of the International Symposium on Human Factors and Ergonomics, member of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society and a member of The Human Factors Transforming Healthcare group. She has published her work in several peer-reviewed journals and has given presentations at both the national and international meetings.

Susan Ehrlich is the Chief Executive Officer of the Priscilla Chan and Mark Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital and Trauma Center, and a Professor of Medicine with the University of California, San Francisco. She has served as the CEO for the past 16 years. Susan is a Lean-certified physician executive with extensive expertise leading and transforming public health care organizations serving diverse and vulnerable populations.

Jakaria Stewart is the Director of Strategic Programs in the Improvement Team, Department of Quality, Safety, and Health Equity at Stanford Health Care. Her current book of business includes supporting teams with improvement efforts in both the inpatient and ambulatory settings, coaching improvement projects, teaching improvement systems and tactics to departments and small teams and serving as a thought partner to healthcare leaders. Prior to joining Stanford Health Care, Jakaria spent over 10 years at Kaiser Permanente transforming operations in both clinical and operational spaces driving increased quality and efficiency through improvement impacting the mission of high-quality affordable health care. At Kaiser Permanente and in the community (Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc, The Links Incorporated, Jack and Jill of America, ATD, and many other organizations), Jakaria has been a force driving outcomes through her impact in leadership roles, mentoring, and setting an environment ripe with a desire to collaborate and achieve.

Charles (Chuck) DeBusk is the Principal of Kinetic Resolution, LLC. He has over 40 years of experience in improving healthcare outcomes and processes. Prior to Kinetic Resolution, Chuck was Vice President of Performance and Process Improvement at UHS of Delaware, a subsidiary of Universal Health Services, Inc. In this 27-hospital system, he was responsible for process and performance improvement across the system, implementing Discrete Event Simulation, and providing leadership to the emergency department, surgery, radiology, laboratory, rehab services, and pharmacy. Chuck has held leadership positions and acted as a consultant with GE Healthcare, MECON, RSM (formerly McGladrey), Allina Health System, and HCA.

He is a certified Master Black Belt in Lean Six Sigma and a Registered Professional Engineer. He holds an MS in industrial engineering from the University of Tennessee and a BS in industrial engineering and operations research from Virginia Tech.