Catalysis Academy

Karen is the Director of Education where she is responsible for the development of curriculum and educational services. In her role, she works with healthcare organizations to understand their current state and design a transformation journey roadmap to help them reach their goals of attaining operational excellence. Karen joined Catalysis after 20 plus years at healthcare organizations, including ThedaCare where she worked in process improvement and operations in both clinical and hospital settings. During that time, she served on the steering team and piloted the initial development of ThedaCare’s lean management system created to support leaders to better understand their business, develop strong collaborative teams, and create visual management to see and improve performance. You can read about her integral role in the development of ThedaCare’s lean management system in the book Beyond Heroes, by Kim Barnas. Prior to joining our team, Karen served as faculty for Catalysis where she worked with healthcare organizations across North America.

Dr. Pam Helander has spent three decades in healthcare in the roles of bedside nurse, quality team member and leader, executive in hospital operations and system quality, and lean expert. She has worked as a coach/mentor of lean processes as well as the leader of a Value stream, transforming care and developing people. Her work life has been at ThedaCare, an integrated health system in Wisconsin. She has also served on statewide task forces and local community forums (i.e. Rotary, Leadership Fox Cities, WNA Interprofessional Education). She is a registered nurse (DNP) with a Masters in Organizational Leadership and Certification in Healthcare Quality (CPHQ). Her passion is for coaching others and seeing them grow as they understand how they can make a difference and see positive outcomes from their efforts.

Chris works closely with Catalysis Healthcare Value Network member organizations to help them assess their current state and develop a plan to reach their transformation goals. He facilitates opportunities for CHVN members to learn, share, and connect with one another. Chris also serves as a Catalysis faculty member, teaching healthcare leaders from around the world about the principles of operational excellence and how they are the foundation for a lean transformation. He previously held various operations leadership and lean deployment positions at Akron Children’s Hospital in Ohio, where he worked with teams to implement several projects and programs to instill a culture of continuous process improvement throughout the organization. Chris received his Bachelors Degree in Communications from The University of Toledo, his Master of Business Administration from Ashland University and his Master Business Operational Excellence from The Ohio State University.