Craig Szelestowski, Founder, Lean Agility Inc., Director, Lean Programs, Telfer Business School Centre for Executive Leadership, University of Ottawa

Craig is a Lean/Agile transformation specialist with more than two decades of experience implementing dramatic turnarounds. He founded Lean Agility Inc. in 2010 to apply Lean exclusively to knowledge work/government organizations. With his coaching, his clients have reduced delivery times by up to 95%, increased capacity by up to 400% and created outstanding levels of employee engagement. In his public service career, as a Vice President, he led the Royal Canadian Mint’s Lean transformation which helped move the organization through a challenging era of cutbacks and job losses into an extended period of financial and organizational health and stability. During his tenure, the Mint realized tens of millions of dollars of Lean improvements, dramatically reduced the time and effort to deliver its products and services, moving from a financial loss to a profit of over $68 million. In terms of employee engagement, it improved from 100 grievances per year to 20 per year and was named by Maclean’s magazine as one of “Canada’s Top 100 Employers” from 2007 to 2010. Craig has served multiple times as a part-time professor at the Telfer School of Business at the University of Ottawa. He is currently the Director of Lean content at the Telfer Centre for Executive Leadership and has taught Lean to Telfer’s MBA students. He is a contributor to Canadian Government Executive magazine and various other publications, contributing both articles and podcasts. He founded the annual Lean Government Summit in 2011.