Meet the team
Julie Miller
President & Co-Founder
Vice President & Co-Founder
Jenn Tankanow
Samantha Lacoursiere
Improvement Partner
Julie Miller is a certified Six Sigma Master Black Belt, Certified Performance Coach, and Prosci Change Management trainer with a unique educational background. Julie has a Bachelor of Science from the University of Wisconsin in Mechanical Engineering and Master of Science from the University of Wisconsin in Organizational Behavior. This unconventional mix allows her to customize her strategic planning, training, and improvement sessions specifically to match the make-up of her audience, capabilities of her participants, and the needs of the culture to support the change. Those who have worked with Julie have learned that events with her are never absent of a few laughs.
Julie has established Strategic Planning, Lean, Six Sigma, Change Management, and PMO at multiple organizations, creating the structure, training, and culture for success. She enjoys turning complex initiatives into actionable plans. She has served as a Master Black Belt mentor and lead trainer for 7 cycles of formalized practitioner development and 3 waves of Lean Six Sigma Black Belt training and certification across service and manufacturing organizations. Recently Julie has been serving as a Professor at Wayne State University, focusing her time on Lean and Six Sigma with their MBA programs. Her 20+ years of creative problem solving has led her to be recognized as one of the 40 New Voices of Quality by the American Society of Quality.
Julie Miller - President & Co-founder
734.649.8285
Additional Notable Achievements:
Established Lean, Six Sigma, and PMO at multiple organizations and across industries; designing and building the structure, training, and culture for Continuous Improvement throughout the organization.
Design and Implement the New Market Entry and New Product Development processes with ongoing, requisite C-level championship.
Lead on 5 corporate acquisition integrations from due diligence through close and sustained operations.
Planned and led senior staff through strategic discussions to reorganize the entire company during restructuring. Thereafter leading the restructuring project including change management, and staff communications on job and process changes.
8 time speaker at both ASQ (American Society of Quality) Lean/Six Sigma and World conferences, receiving high participant ratings for overall content and presentation skills. Also serving as a judge for the ASQ International Team Excellence award 7 years running.
Lean and Six Sigma Professor for the Wayne State Supply Chain Logistics, and Healthcare MBA Programs
Facilitated the development and implementation of the 55x15 long term organizational strategic plan, utilizing Hoshin Kanri, metric tracking and associated program roadmap.
Jenn Tankanow has 20+ years of proven ability to teach, lead, facilitate, and apply Toyota Production System and Lean principles, Strategic Planning, Change Management, and Continuous Improvement. These skills have helped both product and service companies create their vision, define objectives, and implement transformative processes, ownership, and accountability throughout their organizations.
Jenn has a Bachelor of Science in Packaging and MBA from Michigan State University. She has held individual contributor and leadership positions in multiple supply chain functions, fleet maintenance, talent acquisition, IT system rollouts, lean, continuous improvement, and project management deployments. Jenn contributed over $130 million in cost savings and avoidances and helped define, document, and improve countless processes, SOP’s and work instructions.
Her passion is to positively impact the culture around her by challenging and motivating all levels of employees to grow, learn and identify their untapped potential and teach them how to use standard tools to create unique solutions to help themselves and their organization. Jenn believes that when all levels understand an organization’s vision, culture principles are demonstrated by leadership, employees have clear expectations and the training to perform, everyone will thrive, and the company will surpass its goals.
Additional Notable Achievements:
Strong foundational knowledge and demonstrated success with the Toyota Production System during tenure with the North American headquarters, manufacturing functions, and technical design. Direct experience gained and applied in the areas of quality processes, lean methodologies, continuous improvement, problem-solving, respect for everyone, and have been continued to be applied at Whirlpool, Con-way Freight, Amcor, and Common Sail Investment Group.
Led the development and deployment of a multi country PMO, including organization structure, process governance, change management, hard and soft skill training for project managers, team members and leadership.
Successfully used problem solving and continuous improvement methodologies and consensus gathering of multiple functions and countries to implement a global supply chain cost reduction strategy with over $100M in opportunity.
Leading member in the development of a Lean implementation strategy in a service-based company. Excelled with the facilitation of training for a diverse work environment, all things standards, positive impact on culture, and leadership coaching.
Applied Lean concepts, behavioral motivation and SMART targets to redesign multiple processes and department structures that improved efficiency & quality and enhanced team member engagement, ownership and accountability for both talent recruiting functions and product development to delivery.
Sam Lacoursiere is a Certified Quality Process Analyst and trained Prosci Change Management Practitioner with a Bachelor of Science from Central Michigan University. After starting her career as a Recreational Therapist, Sam discovered her true calling after meeting JointPivot founders Julie and Jenn and completing their Continuous Improvement Practitioner program.
In the midst of chaos, Sam thrives bringing order and clarity to intricate projects. She has a knack for facilitating effective communication among team members, enabling them to better articulate thoughts and ideas with one another. With a keen eye for detail and a passion for driving process improvement, she specializes in managing complex projects from inception to completion and ensuring thorough documentation of standards and procedures
A self proclaimed "Smartsheet geek," Sam also excels at creating tools that streamline processes, monitor projects, and analyze data, all while ensuring maximum efficiency.
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