Our Team

Karen Martin | Mike Osterling | Ric Van Der Linden

Karen Martin, Principal

Karen Martin and her team provide Lean transformation and business performance improvement support to industry, government, and the not-for-profit sector. Karen's broad understanding of operations design and business management stems from her experience building the operational infrastructure for several rapid growth start-up operations that each grew into multi-billion dollar companies. Her expertise also includes a keen understanding of customer value, which she honed while serving in sales and marketing roles -- and extensive experience with legal and regulatory issues. She has provided support to organizations in a broad range of industries including construction, distribution, energy, financial services, government, healthcare, insurance, manufacturing, military, publishing, research and development, and technology.

Karen’s quality and process orientation evolved from her early career as a scientist (B.S. Microbiology, Pennsylvania State University) and was formally developed while serving as the Director of Quality Improvement for an organization that managed the healthcare for 22 million Americans and the Director of the Institute for Quality and Productivity at San Diego State University, where she oversaw the university’s sell-out Lean Enterprise and Quality Business Practices programs.  Her passion for workforce development led her to a graduate program in adult learning (M.A. Education, California State University, Bakersfield).

As a consultant, Karen is known for her keen diagnostic skills and rapid results-focused approach to meeting client needs. A skilled change agent, Karen builds energy within work teams by helping them focus an organization’s key performance goals – faster delivery of higher quality products and services at lower cost – while simultaneously building organization-wide problem-solving capabilities and boosting employee engagement. Clients also give Karen high marks for helping them become self-sustaining as quickly as possible.

Karen’s healthcare-rich background includes clinical, administrative, and regulatory work in hospitals, post-acute care settings, payor services, medical research, clinical laboratories, physician group practices, integrative medicine and behavioral healthcare.

Karen is highly-rated speaker and instructor for the University of California, San Diego’s Lean Enterprise program. She co-authored The Kaizen Event Planner: Achieving Rapid Improvement in Office, Service, and Technical Environments and co-developed Metrics-Based Process Mapping: An Excel-Based Solution (both by Productivity Press). Her next book, The Outstanding Organization, addresses the missing fundamentals that are key success factors in organizational transformation (McGraw-Hill, May 2012).