California Improvement
Summit 2026

Ahmed is a Professor of Industrial Technology and Packaging at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo and a consultant with more than 20 years as an educator and practitioner. Based in San Luis Obispo, he works closely with the campus and Small Business Development Center (SBDC) communities.

Beau has spent over 30 years challenging organizations in systems thinking, from manufacturing floor and supply chains to financial institutions and large integrated healthcare systems. His critical thinking in process and systems improvements has been documented in two award-winning books, Perfecting Patient Journeys and The Complete Lean Enterprise. He completed his first college textbook, Operations Management: Integrating Service, Supply Chain, and Manufacturing Contexts, in 2024, and is currently working with industry experts to define an improved approach to continuous improvement while teaching university courses.

Christian is Professor of Educational Research, Statistics, and Psychometrics at California State University, Fresno, and founder of Wandeler Consulting LLC. He leads higher-education improvement work in learning systems, assessment, faculty development, AI integration, and evidence-based decision-making, and consults on organizational culture, self-management, continuous improvement, and sociotechnical systems design.

Chris is a continuous improvement practitioner with 20+ years applying Practical Problem Solving, Toyota Kata, A3 Thinking, and DMAIC across manufacturing, healthcare, and higher education. A lifelong Californian, he teaches remotely at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo and resides in Fullerton, Orange County. His professional affiliations include CVS Health, AME West Region, Cal Poly SLO, and Central Coast Lean.

David is an Operations Excellence Advisor with more than 35 years of lean and operations leadership, including nearly 30 years as a senior leader in McKinsey’s Manufacturing and Supply Chain Practice — scaling operational excellence across aerospace, automotive, and agriculture industries globally. His practitioner career spans Toyota’s Supplier Development Program, Bombardier aerostructure, and executive transformation roles including VP Transformation at The Wonderful Company, where he delivered more than $100M in run-rate improvement in three years. A Cal Poly Industrial Technology alumnus and longtime CCL participant, he now advises on lean application in California’s agricultural sector and mentors the next generation of West Coast operations leaders.

David is Program Director of the USC Healthcare Systems Engineering program, directing an MS within the Industrial and Systems Engineering Department. Over 25 years focused solely on healthcare, he has led 100+ Lean and improvement projects across 25+ California hospitals — from major Los Angeles medical centers to rural facilities. Twelve years ago he founded the Society of Healthcare Improvement Professionals (SHIP), now roughly 300 members.

Eric is President and CEO of Melfred Borzall, a fourth-generation, family-owned Santa Maria manufacturer of tooling for the horizontal directional drilling industry — serving contractors who build and maintain underground infrastructure across North America and around the world. A mechanical engineer by training with prior experience at Rocketdyne and Caltech, he is a licensed Professional Engineer and holds several patents in directional drilling. At Melfred Borzall, he works to strengthen culture, leadership, and manufacturing performance through EOS, lean thinking, and practical continuous improvement — with particular interest in making improvement visible, sustainable, and human-centered in small organizations.

Eric is Director of Central Coast Lean and Professor of Industrial Technology at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, and Co-Lead of the Future of People at Work Initiative — a national nine-partner network dedicated to improving how people work by bringing together different improvement methods and organizations. He has spent about thirty years as a practitioner, educator, and community builder across manufacturing, healthcare, government, and education settings in California, including fifteen years of annual summits and workshops through CCL. The California Improvement Summit is his attempt to take what has worked on the Central Coast and ask whether something larger — and less predictable — is possible.

Ken is a Professor of Graphic Communication at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, where he has taught lean and continuous improvement in print and digital media production since 2002. The author of Lean Printing: Pathway to Success and a contributor to The Routledge Companion to Lean Management, he has presented on lean manufacturing for print at conferences worldwide and conducted consulting across North America, Europe, and Asia. As he approaches retirement, he brings three decades of sector-specific lean practice and a continuing interest in what the next chapter holds for improvement work.

Kevin is a Central Coast lean practitioner, entrepreneur, and mentor with deep roots in California manufacturing. He learned lean running Abbott’s injection molding facility in Salt Lake City, applied it at a photonics operation in SLO and as president of Specialty Silicone Fabricators (2004–2012) — where lean investment kept manufacturing in California rather than offshoring — and co-founded Gemba Academy, the largest online lean and six sigma training provider. He now invests in and mentors Central Coast startups through Central Coast Ventures and the SLO Hothouse.

Matt leads new vertical development at Lime, where he builds the feedback loops, metrics, and operating models that let new services scale — most recently Lime Delivery Pass, which serves couriers using shared mobility as part of their work. A Cal Poly SLO alumnus with a career spanning Northern California to Los Angeles, he brings a builder/operator perspective on how AI, automation, and better operating systems can help teams learn faster without making work less humane.

Michael has more than 40 years in continuous improvement across manufacturing, healthcare, education, and nonprofits, in industry, consulting, teaching, and volunteer roles. He is the author of “How to Do a Gemba Walk” and “Learn to See the Invisible” and serves as Vice President of the AME Excellence Award Council. Based in the Bay Area, his recent focus is leadership behaviors, learning cultures, and how digital technologies and AI are reshaping the way organizations learn and improve.

Skylar is an economist and operations leader at Frolic Community, where she leads improvement for a distributed team building limited-equity cooperative homeownership in the San Francisco Bay Area and Los Angeles. Formerly Chief Economist at Zillow, she was a leading national voice on housing affordability — testifying before Congress and working with state housing agencies — and brings improvement thinking to knowledge work, housing economics, and mission-driven organizations.

Stephen brings 30+ years leading and transforming organizations across Toyota, McKinsey, the U.S. Air Force, private equity, and healthcare — as an executive, consultant, and senior executive (SES). Now based in Reno, NV with strong California connections, he is known for translating strategic thinking into actionable, measurable implementation, and currently serves as CEO of an early-stage AI tech company.

has spent most of his career studying high-performing healthcare organizations. He co-founded UC-Berkeley’s Center for Lean Engagement and Research (CLEAR), served as Dean of Berkeley’s School of Public Health (2002–2013), and remains deeply engaged in California health policy and delivery through board and advisory roles with the Integrated Healthcare Association, Catalysis, Lifelong Medical, and the California Office of Health Care Affordability.