James Stephenson

James (Jim) Stephenson has a long and varied career working in public, private and educational organizations in the US, Europe and the Middle East. As a Master Black Belt he has trained, coached and mentored hundreds of Yellow, Green and Black Belts. In addition he has worked closely with senior executives facilitating their efforts to drive change and improve their organizations capability to meet increasingly more challenging customer demands while sustaining or improving financial performances.

From 2003 to 2011 Jim was a Senior Partner at Catalyst Consulting Ltd in the UK. During this period he spearheaded the creation and continuation of Catalysts highly successful and on-going public training program. During this time he trained hundreds of men and women in the UK and Europe to Green and Black Belt levels. He helped established a certification process that is now a key part of the British Quality Foundations certification program. In addition he was deeply involved in numerous client assignments in both manufacturing and service organizations.

In 2011 Jim accepted the Master Black Belt position at the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) near Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. From scratch, he lead the creation of a program of Lean Six Sigma training, project coaching, executive support and certification that resulted in a major cultural change at the university. He trained 180 Green Belts, upgraded seven of those to Black Belt, established an internal certification program and a BQF certification program as well. He retired from this position in June 2013.

Previously in his professional career Jim was a serving officer in the US Air Force for 23 years. He then joined Minitab Inc, the statistical software company headquartered in State College, PA. From his position as Manager of International Operations he established Minitabs first two international subsidiaries one in the UK and the other in France and subsequently served for several years as General Manager of Minitab Ltd in Coventry.

Credentials:

• MBA, International Marketing & French, Thunderbird School of Global Management