Breakthrough Learning, Inc. was established in 1984 to build the capacity of leadership teams to achieve desired results. Our work is grounded in the discipline and methods of Systems Thinking and Process Excellence. We offer specialized client services and products:

• Consulting services to support strategic planning, business development, redesign and process improvement.
• Advanced decision-support and team-learning tools, including the
  Friday Night at the ER simulation game, the Six Decisions simulation and custom business simulations.
• Coaching and hands-on training services through workshops and support services.

Staff

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Bette Gardner is principal of Breakthrough Learning. Since founding the firm in 1984, Bette has assisted a wide range of client organizations with consulting, training and personal coaching, and she has developed a number of products for team learning.

Bette's experience includes positions in management and planning; consulting engagements in strategic, business and facilities planning and in operations improvement; development of team-learning curricula and tools; teaching and group facilitation; and governance leadership roles with nonprofit organizations.

During the past 12 years, Bette has taken special interest in bringing the discipline of Systems Thinking into routine practice in organizations, pioneering ways for people at all levels to apply concepts, methods and tools. She created the Friday Night at the ER team-learning game to bring concepts of Systems Thinking into widespread use. More recently, she has focused on developing computer-based simulation tools for client organizations for decision support, for planning and for broad organizational learning.

Bette has also collaborated with others to create computer-based learning tools. These projects have included The Fifth Discipline-Interactive with Peter Senge from MIT and Arthur Anderson & Co.; Risky Business: Mastering the New Business of Health and The Community Builder: Improving Quality of Life developed with High Performance Systems and The Healthcare Forum.

Prior to consulting, Bette spent 15 years in senior management positions with a hospital, a healthcare ventures company and a medical association. She was Vice President for Planning and Development at San Jose Medical Center during a critical turn-around period; she started up Health Advantage Ventures, a diversified service and venture-investment corporation, and served as its first vice president; and she was Associate Director of the Division of Research and Socioeconomics for California Medical Association. Bette has held faculty positions for numerous national conferences, and she has served as board member for local healthcare organizations. She holds a B.A. degree from Boston University.

Michael Heil specializes in strategic planning and business development services for consulting clients. He brings experience in management, planning and engineering to his work. Michael's strenghs include analytic skill, practical approaches to problem-solving and innovative idea-generation.

In addition to his commitments with Breakthrough Learning, Inc., Michael is principal of HealthWorks, Inc. a management consulting firm partnered with Breakthrough Learning whose clients are healthcare organizations. Since founding HealthWorks in 1992, Michael has assisted large integrated healthcare systems, academic medical centers, community hospitals, medical groups, HMOs and long-term care services in strategic and business planning, operations improvement, and new service development.

Michael has 26 years experience in hospital and health services management and management consulting. He has been chief operating officer for a growing suburban hospital, vice president for professional services of an urban hospital, president and chairman of the board of a regional medical helicopter firm, and a management engineer both in healthcare and in manufacturing companies.

Michael received his B.S. in Industrial Engineering from Lehigh University and his Masters degree in Hospital and Health Services Administration with distinction from the Graduate School of Business at Cornell University. He has served in faculty roles at Cornell University, St. MaryOs College, and for numerous national conferences.

Carol Houseman instructs the Friday Night at the ER game and provides consulting services to client organizations.

Carol has more than 15 years experience in management and organization development. She has served as Internal OD Consultant and Work Transformation Coordinator for Sutter Health, and she maintains an active consulting practice with diverse client organizations.

In addition to training and development, Carol's expertise includes change management and culture revitalization, team building and conflict management, and executive coaching services.

Carol has an MBA degree in Organizational Behavior.

Doug Mosel specializes in process improvement and team training. He brings a unique level of expertise in working with collaborative networks of multiple organizations. Doug's work incorporates applied Systems Thinking and organizational learning.

Doug has more than 20 years experience in training and consulting, the last 12 of which have been concentrated in healthcare quality improvement and redesign. Before establishing his consulting practice, Doug developed and directed the Institute for CQI Education at VHA Tri-State in Indianapolis serving 21 member hospitals. He was director of quality and organization development for Memorial Hospital and Health System in South Bend, Indiana and he was executive director of its nationwide management consulting group.

Doug has served as advisor and faculty to The Healthcare Forum for its quality improvement network and its strategic simulation workshops, and he has been a frequent speaker and presenter at conferences in the U.S., Australia, New Zealand, Brazil and Canada. Doug has published a series of articles on quality improvement and benchmarking, and he co-authored Benchmarking in Health Care, A Collaborative Approach (1994).

In recent years, Doug's interests have evolved to the study and application of living systems theory, in which he is working to improve relationships between people and the ecologies within which we live and work.

Doug received his masters degree in education and counseling from Indiana University, and he completed professional education programs in training and organizational development with NTL Institute and University Associates.

Rhoda Ryba specializes in process improvement. She has pioneered an innovative and highly successful method that enables teams to dramatically accelerate the improvement process, produce creative ideas and achieve superior outcomes for clinical and business process excellence.

Rhoda has 26 years experience in hospital and health plan management. Rhoda has been vice president for patient administrative services and chief quality officer at Overlake Hospital Medical Center in Bellevue, Washington; director of quality and health management at Presbyterian Health Plan in Alburquerque, New Mexico; vice president for quality at Legacy Health System in Portland, Oregon and medical staff services administrator at Good Samaritan Medical Center in Phoenix, Arizona. Rhoda studied at Arizona State University and the University of New Mexico. She has published articles and been a presenter at national conferences on clinical quality improvement and systems thinking.

The process improvement method Rhoda has pioneered, Big!mprovement, has three key attributes:

• The method requires only a matter of weeks (even for complex business and clinical processes) whereas conventional methods require many months;
• For clinical topics, the method is sufficiently efficient for teams that meaningful participation by practicing physicians is achieved, thereby increasing the effectiveness of adherence to the new process;
• The method is grounded in meaningful outcomes measurements that are linked to real financial, market and patient care quality performance so that the effort is integrated with the organization's strategy, not a response to the latest crisis or accreditation survey.

Steve Williams specializes in systems dynamics modeling and development of computer-based simulation tools for decision support and team learning.

Steve has developed and used simulation tools with medical group, health plan and hospital clients to examine various strategies, policies and practices. He has 20 years experience in health services management as a medical group administrator and as hospital administrator with Kaiser Permanente. Most recently he has been assistant to the regional administrator for the Permanente Medical Group Northern California. Previously, he was medical group administrator for Kaiser Permanente Medical Center in Sacramento.

Steve has served as advisor to The Healthcare Forum for its strategic simulation series, and has served as faculty for several national conferences. He received his Masters degree in hospital and health care administration from the University of Minnesota.

Sue Woolsey is our operations manager, in charge of all office functions including accounting, customer service, product sales, contract management, inventory management, and much more. Her administrative and analytic skills, multi-tasking ability and aptitude for innovation are key to Breakthrough Learning�s success.

On staff since 1994, Sue came to Breakthrough Learning from the high-tech field, having spent three years in administration and customer service at Viking Technology in San Jose and twelve years in various administrative positions at Amdahl in Sunnyvale, California.

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Service Organizations	Manufacturing Companies
Abbott Northwestern Hospital Baylor Health Care Brigham and Womens Hospital Cleveland Clinic Dartmouth Medical School Daughters of Charity Health System Georgetown Univ. Med. Center Group Health Cooperative Kaiser Permanente Mayo Clinic Quest Diagnostics State Farm Insurance Voluntary Hospitals of America Yale-Newhaven Hospital	Cisco Systems Eastman Kodak Company GE Medical Systems Hewlett Packard Intel Corporation LL Bean Johnson & Johnson Kraft Foods Ortho Pharmaceutical Corporation Sprint The Boeing Company The Limited, Inc. Pepsi Bottling Group Xilinx, Inc.
Public Agencies; Utilities	Academic Institutions
Canadian National Railroad City of Plano, Texas Federal Aviation Administration Minnesota Dept of Transportation National Institutes of Health US Environmental Protection Agency Pacific Gas and Electric Company Peco Energy Company Port of Seattle US Postal Service US Veterans Administration Wisconsin Public Service	Boston University Dartmouth Medical School Emory University Johns Hopkins University Kings Fund College Loyola University Rio Salado College San Jose State University Thomas Jefferson University University of California, San Francisco University of New Mexico