Pierre Ouillet

Pierre Ouillet is a vice chancellor at UC San Diego and chief financial officer for both the main campus and Health Sciences.

As a vice chancellor, he is the senior executive officer accountable for the university's annual budget of $5 billion, including a human resources function supporting 29,000 faculty and staff; a housing, dining and hospitality division serving 15,000 students and faculty; and other critical functions, including information services and real estate. As CFO for Health Sciences, he oversees the financial health of the School of Medicine, all academic and clinical departments, and UC San Diego Health Physician Group.

Pierre has a Master of Science degree from the University of Maryland, and a Master of Business Administration from INSEAD (European Institute of Business Administration). He is also a Certified General Accountant.

Mary Walshok

Mary Walshok is the Associate Vice Chancellor of Continuing Education and Public Programs and Dean of Extension. She oversees programs that educate more than 61,000 enrollees annually, which translates to more than 25,000 students in over 4,400 courses. Walshok has developed outreach efforts to help accelerate the San Diego region’s economic vitality, grow the region's globally competitive talent pool and help college graduates transition to high-demand employment areas. She also helps provide access to a vast array of regional intellectual resources through the award-winning UCSD-TV and nationwide through UCTV. During her tenure, Walshok has played an active role in helping the University expand its local impact, national reputation and global reach. 

Vince Kellen

Vince Kellen is the Chief Information Officer for the University of California San Diego, as well as a member of the Chancellor's Cabinet, and vice chancellor and chief financial officer's senior management team. 

Vince’s recent work has been in the areas of student success and learning analytics and application of advanced technology in higher education. He was recently inducted into the CIO Hall of Fame, to go along with numerous other awards. 

Ashley Gambhir

Shifting Culture with Everyday Improvement at UC San Diego Health

UC San Diego Health is committed to creating 10,000+ problem-solvers who improve the value of care for our patients while loving their jobs. In 2018, the Transformational Healthcare initiative pilot offered proof of concept that continuous improvement supports organizational strategy and engages team members at every level.  Ashley will give an update on why lean methods are being emphasized, how UC San Diego Health got started on this journey, and share the value that has been created already through early successes.

Bio

Ashley is proud to work at UC San Diego since 2006 and currently serves as Senior Director of Transformational Healthcare and Ambulatory Innovation at UC San Diego Health. She believes strongly that we can achieve more when we work effectively together and tap into the collective genius of our teams. Ashley is a certified project manager, certified change practitioner, and a Lean Six Sigma Black Belt. She earned an M.B.A. from the Rady School of Management at UC San Diego and has a B.S. in Mathematics from the University of Puget Sound. 

Tracy O’Rourke

The Role of Leaders in Building a Continuous Improvement Culture

The role of the leader in successful process improvement is key. Without the proper support, teams struggle or fail and cannot deliver results successfully. In order to build a robust culture of problem solvers, leaders must be clear on their part in the process. We'll discuss a framework for building a process improvement culture, actions, mindsets to help leaders support and build a culture of process improvement!

Bio

Tracy is a Managing Partner at GoLeanSixSigma.com. She is co-host of the Just-In-Time Cafe Podcast and co-author of “The Problem-Solving Toolkit: A Surprisingly Simple Guide To Your Lean Six Sigma Journey." Tracy is an accomplished facilitator, trainer and presenter. She has trained over 2,000 people, mentored 500+ people and has helped complete 500+ projects with results that range between $50,000 and $8 million dollars in savings.  

Tracy is also the Lean Six Sigma Green Belt Instructor at UC San Diego Extension.

Prachi Raheja

Lean Bench at Work: Bringing Process Improvement to ESR

The Lean Bench is UC San Diego’s “go team” for process improvement - a select set of campus expert practitioners of Lean Six Sigma methodology who engage and lead crucial efforts around process improvement, operational excellence, and business. Since its inception in 2018, Lean Bench has focused on reviewing and optimizing “lean-ness” for some of key ESR projects like Research Administration, Financial Information System, Student Information Systems, and a non-ESR campus wide initiative for the One Card project. Lean Bench managers Prachi Raheja and Shawn Munro will be showcasing and quantifying the benefits and value of Lean Bench’s process improvement efforts.

Bio

Prachi Raheja is the program manager for Continuous Improvement in UC San Diego's IT Services department. She an engineer and MBA with specialization in IT, and a Lean Six Sigma Black Belt. She is responsible for leading the continuous improvement program at IT Services and also for managing the Lean Bench –a select group of campus expert practitioners of Lean Six Sigma methodology leading crucial efforts around process improvement, operational excellence and business efficiency.

Shawn Munro

Lean Bench at Work: Bringing Process Improvement to ESR

The Lean Bench is UC San Diego’s “go team” for process improvement - a select set of campus expert practitioners of Lean Six Sigma methodology who engage and lead crucial efforts around process improvement, operational excellence, and business. Since its inception in 2018, Lean Bench has focused on reviewing and optimizing “lean-ness” for some of key ESR projects like Research Administration, Financial Information System, Student Information Systems, and a non-ESR campus wide initiative for the One Card project. Lean Bench managers Prachi Raheja and Shawn Munro will be showcasing and quantifying the benefits and value of Lean Bench’s process improvement efforts.

Bio

Shawn Munro is a Lean Bench manager and coordinator for Administrative Process Excellence (APEX) in the Jacobs School of Engineering.

Greg Nishihira

Building a Better Mousetrap: How Fleet Services Is Applying Lessons Learned at Process Palooza

UC has set a goal to be carbon neutral by 2025.  For vehicles, Fleet Services has a pivotal role in supporting these efforts by having control over vehicle procurement, both in quantity and selection.  A process to implement control exists but the acceptance, communication, enforcement and approval time needed for this process were inefficient and not entirely effective.  Greg will share how the implementation of many of the suggestions presented by the Process Palooza competition teams have contributed significantly to improvements in all of these areas, along with the cost savings the university has experienced so far this year.

Bio

Greg been with UC San Diego since 2008, serving first as Operations Manager and now as Assistant Director of the Fleet Services department.  He spearheads his department’s efforts to support UC’s goal to be carbon neutral by “greening” the campus fleet through the procurement of alternative fuel vehicles and hybrids. Additionally, he serves as co-chair of UC’s Fleet Sustainability Working Group and serves on the campus’ Transportation Working Group committee. Greg holds an AAS in Transportation Management from Milwaukee Area Technical College and a BS in Business Administration from California Polytechnic State University. He also maintains active Automotive Service Excellence (ASE) and California Underground Storage Tank (CA-UST) certifications.