Leading with Positivity and Gratitude—Going Beyond the Six Conditions

About the Speakers

Erin Abu-Rish Blakeney, PhD, RN, is a co-lead of the ITHS Team Science Module and Research Associate Professor in the Department of Biobehavioral Nursing and Health Informatics at the UW School of Nursing. Dr. Blakeney’s program of research focuses on how teams work together and how their teamwork influences the production of new knowledge and translation of research into practice along the entire classroom to bench to bedside spectrum. She has nearly 15 years of experience developing, implementing, and evaluating team approaches to interdisciplinary education, healthcare, and research.

Jennifer Sprecher is Director of Strategy Development and Deployment with the School of Nursing. Ms. Sprecher works with organizations to achieve excellence through Strategy development, Lean Project Management, balanced scorecards, change management, benchmarking, team problem solving, team and leadership coaching.

Ms. Sprecher is a strong team facilitator, called upon to facilitate high-level teams where interaction and reaching objectives are critical. Sample facilitations include strategic planning, building collaborations, designing and developing new services, products and processes, implementing process improvements, implementing research studies and creating new research centers. She has worked extensively in the past few years within the arena of team science and applying team concepts to innovative development and research teams.

Before the UW School of Nursing, Ms. Sprecher focused exclusively on health research in the Institute of Translational Health Sciences, also within the University of WA. Prior to the UW, she spent 7 years as Executive Director of the Washington State Quality Award (WSQA), a Baldrige-based non-profit organization. With a background in Industrial Engineering, Ms. Sprecher has been working with process improvement for over 25 years using continuous process improvement methods including Lean, Lean-Sigma, Plan Do Check Act and 6S (5S workplace organization combined with Safety) and Total Quality Management.

Ms. Sprecher has a bachelor’s degree in Industrial Engineering, a Master’s of Science in Management Systems, is a certified Lean Six Sigma Black Belt and an International Coaching Federation ACC certified Leadership Coach.