Russell started out as a banker in London and New York before moving into Management Consultancy where he spent 20 years working as a Partner at PwC/IBM, KPMG and the German strategy consultancy Zeb.

In 2015, he became the CEO of BQF where he got my first taste of the Excellence world and the EFQM model and a first chance to run a company rather than a division of a multi-national. The main theme that runs through Russell’s career is the planning and delivering of organisational transformation and large-scale change projects. He has been lucky enough to do this across many countries from Japan to the US via Europe and Australia as well as within multiple industries and sectors. Along the way he has also worked with several start-ups as a Board Advisor or CEO coach. He joined EFQM as CEO 1 November 2018.

In the book, Tech Trending, Dr. H. James Harrington was referred to as “the quintessential tech trender.” The New York Times referred to him as having a “…knack for synthesis and an open mind about packaging his knowledge and experience in new ways -characteristics that may matter more as prerequisites for new-economy success than technical wizardry…”

It has been said about him, “Harrington writes the books that other consultants use.”

The leading Japanese author on quality, Professor Yoshio Kondo, stated: “Business Process Improvement (methodology) investigated and established by Harrington and his group is some of the new strategies which brings revolutionary improvement not only in quality of products and services, but also the business processes which yield the excellent quality of the output.”

The father of “Total Quality Control,” Dr. Armand V. Feigenbaum stated: “Harrington is one of those very rare business leaders who combines outstanding inherent ability, effective management skills, broad technology background and great effectiveness in producing results. His record of accomplishment is a very long, broad and deep one that is highly and favorably recognized.”

The author, Tom Peters, stated, “I fervently hope that Harrington’s readers will not only benefit from the thoroughness of his effort but will also ‘smell’ the fundamental nature of the challenge for change that he mounts.”

William Clinton, Past President of the U.S., appointed Harrington to serve as an Ambassador of Good Will.

Wayne Newton’s comment related to Harrington were, “Jim, when I grow up, I want to be you.”

Harrington is past Chairman and past President of the prestigious International Academy for Quality and of the American Society for Quality Control. He is also an active member of the Global Knowledge Economics Council.

He served for ten years as an A-level member of ISO TC176 (the technical committee responsible for writing the ISO 9000 series). He also served as an A-level member of TC 207 (the technical committee responsible for writing ISO 14000 environmental standards) for five years representing the International Academy for Quality. He is now a member of the ISO TC 279 that is responsible for preparing the standard for Innovation Management Systems.

A distinguished alumnus of IIT Bombay, Suresh Lulla has made a mark through his work in the field of Quality.

He is a veteran professional with over 50 years of experience as a management consultant, speaker, trainer, author, and storyteller.

His areas of specialization include, Problem Solving, Process Excellence, Performance Excellence, Benchmarking for Best Practices.

Suresh was mentored by Dr J M Juran, ‘the father of Quality’, who, along with Mahatma Gandhi and Shri Ramkrishna Bajaj form the Trinity of his role models—He jokes that one thing he has in common with them is a baldhead.

His Quality Guru is Dr J M Juran and his Benchmarking Guru is Dr Robert Camp. Mr. Lulla founded India’s first dedicated Quality Management consulting firm, Qimpro Consultants, in 1987. Since inception, Qimpro Has helped save over INR 25,000 crores for organizations across manufacturing and service industries.

In 2004, he was awarded the Indian Merchants Chamber (IMC) Juran Centennial Medal for his Pioneering contribution to quality practices in India.

Mr. Lulla is the Chairman, IMC Quality Awards Committee which adjudges the IMC Ramkrishna Bajaj National Quality Award as well

In an organization and thereby reduces the related Cost Of Poor Quality (COPQ), with no capital investment.

Mr. Lulla holds a B Tech in Mechanical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay and a MS in Industrial Engineering from Wayne State University, Detroit. He is a Senior Member of the American Society for Quality and a Certified

Management Consultant from the Institute of Management Consultants of India.

More about Suresh Lulla—his books, articles, blog, etc—is available on sureshlulla.com

Stefan HAGMANN holds a PhD in Business Administration from the University of Mannheim (Germany) where worked as a Project Lead and Researcher. He studied Business Administration, Economics, Vocational Education and Cognitive Psychology at the University of Kiel (Germany) and the University of California, Santa Barbara (USA).

In 1995, he started his professional career with Volkswagen Education, where he acted as Consultant and Trainer, at the VW plants of Zwickau and Dresden.

From 2000 onwards, Stefan worked with the German Quality Society being a member of different validation/auditing teams, mainly in Corporate Quality, Environment, and Excellence functions.

In 2003, he joined GTZ International, the Federal German Company for Technical Developments, an organisation that provides technical assistance within international assignments and development programs. With GTZ, he worked for the Technical Training Centre for the Oil & Gas Sector in Doha / Qatar- managed by Qatar Petroleum. From 2005, Stefan joined ASPIRE ZONE Foundation, a facility management, investment, sports education and sports medicine provider.

Emmanuel Perakis is born in Germany and holds an MBA (Highest Honours), an MSc in Biotechnology (Honours) and a BSc in Chemical Engineering. He has over twenty five years of experience in results delivering executive roles, driving positive change in multinational corporations (Vodafone Group, Henkel AG), in a broad range of functions (Corporate Communications, Corporate Responsibility, Business Excellence, People Management, Innovation Facilitation, Change Management).

In 2003 he was honored with the ‘European Leadership Award’ by the EFQM for his “contribution to the Excellence movement. Among other he has served as:

• Jury Committee Member and Senior Assessor for the EFQM European Excellence Award in Brussels
• Corporate Excellence & Responsibility Director for Vodafone
• Board Member of Vodafone Group's Global Sustainability Council in the UK
• Member of the ISO26000 development Working Group
• Lead Auditor for Quality, Environment and Health & Safety Management Systems
• Training Faculty Member for the EFQM in Brussels
• Training Quality Control Consultant for the GRI in Amsterdam
• Master Coach for the Behavioural Institute (accredited by the ICC)
• Professional Speaker for Speaker Associates in the UK
• Innovation, Human Capital, Core Assessor for SKGEP, DGEP, ADAEP in the UAE

Since 2007 he is Managing Partner of STREAM, a boutique consulting company helping companies “improve their efficiency, effectiveness and responsibility”, delivering complex projects across the value chain (from Culture Development to Change Management and from Leadership Improvement to Corporate Responsibility) for organisations such as Coca-Cola, Carrefour, Deutsche Telekom, Heineken, Henkel, Mercedes-Benz, Nestle, Novartis, Banka Intesa, Interface, EFQM, WWF, GRI, CSR Europe.

Carmine Marcello is the Executive Director of Hetherington Kearney Group (HKG), a management consulting firm specializing in providing strategic advice to executive teams in the areas of: Human capital management, Governance, Enterprise and operational risk management, Resource and asset optimization, Financial sustainability and systemic risk analysis, Innovation and technology implementations, Project oversight and governance, Performance management frameworks Customer service excellence, Operational resilience planning, Asset Management frameworks and Corporate excellence transformation.

Prior to forming HKG, he served as President and CEO of Hydro One. He started his career at Hydro One as an electrical engineer and rose through the ranks holding many executive positions.

Hydro One is the largest electricity transmission and distribution company in Ontario with over $23 billion in assets and over $6 billion in annual revenue. Hydro One owns and operates substantially Ontario’s entire electricity transmission network, and is the largest electricity distributor by number of customers.

His many accomplishments include:

Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Engineers (FCAE)

Institute of Corporate Directors – Director (ICD.D)

MBA, Schulich School of Business, York University, Toronto Canada

Professional Engineer Ontario (P.Eng.)

University of Toronto - Bach. of Applied Science in Electrical Eng. (BASc)

Dr Robin Mann is Head of the Centre for Organizational Excellence Research, Massey University,

New Zealand, Chairman of the Global Benchmarking Network, Co-Founder of BPIR.com Limited – a best practice resource, Founder of the International Best Practice Competition, and Founder of

The TRADE Best Practice Benchmarking Methodology. The TRADE methodology is the cornerstone of the Dubai Government Excellence Program’s “Dubai We Learn” initiative in which 35 benchmarking projects have been undertaken since 2015. Robin has served as a technical Coordinator for the Abu Dhabi Government Excellence Award and Mohammed bin Rashid Government Excellence Award. Robin was awarded the Harrington/Ishikawa Medal in 2011 for Contributions to the advancement of quality in the Asia Pacific region. Robin obtained his PhD in TQM at Liverpool University in 1992. Robin is currently overseeing a research project involving 30 Countries to understand how business excellence initiatives impact on nation building.

Graduated in mechanical engineering with a PhD in industrial engineering, prof. Cesarotti is a tenured professor in Operations Management, Quality Management and Project Management at the University of Rome “Tor Vergata”.

Prof. Cesarotti is a keynote speaker, executive advisor and trainer in the areas of Business Excellence, Innovation & Corporate Entrepreneurship, Operational Excellence, Strategy & Execution. During his more than 25 years of professional activity, he has advised several large organisations (manufacturing and services), both in the private and public sector.

Prof. Cesarotti has been Faculty Associate (area: International Business) at the Georgetown University - Washington D.C. (USA), has cooperated with the IBM Almaden Research Centre on Service Science (San Josè, CA), has been visiting professor at the University of Versailles Saint-Quentin and has lectured in several universities worldwide.

Prof. Cesarotti has been chairman of the European University Network for TQM, and chairman of the Scientific Committee of the Italian Association for the Safety Culture (ASICUS).

Within EFQM, Prof. Cesarotti has been chairman of the Community of Practice for Academic Training and Learning, chairman of the 2009 Learning Edge Conference on Service Innovation, scientific responsible for the EFQM Cases, co-developer of the Pegasus assessment programme and the Change Leader training programme.

He is also qualified as EFQM Lead Assessor, Lean Six Sigma Master Black Belt, and ISO 9001 Lead Auditor. He has written 4 books and more than 100 papers published on international journals.

A seasoned PMP® credential holder with more than 20 years of experience, Mr. Triana is a well-known international speaker and consultant specialized in organizational project management (PMOs, Organizational Maturity, Troubled Projects and Strategic Alignment) and Interpersonal Skills (Leadership, Conflict Management and Negotiation) for Private and government organizations across the U.S., Europe, Africa, Asia and Latin America. A PMP® credential holder, Mr. Triana has managed/consulted projects, programs and portfolios in diverse industries (Government, Mining, Construction, Telecomm, Financial Services, Information Technology and Development Projects among Others) for private and government organizations across North America, Latin America, Europe, Asia and Africa.

Currently he is the President of Practical Thinking Group, additionally he acts as Project Management Advisor with the United Nations Office of Project Services (UNOPS) and supports the PMO Global Alliance as a Global Ambassador.

As part of his professional activities he’s well recognized in the region for being an expert and has worked and advocated for implementing Organization Project Management best practices based on PMI in several governments agencies around Latin America and Africa (Ministry of Public Works in Chile, Mayor’s Office in Montevideo Uruguay,

PetroEcuador in Ecuador, Mayor’s Office and Water/Sanitation Office in Lusaka, Zambia, MCC Zambia, MCC Niger, Ministry of Culture in Guatemala, Ministry of Public Works in Costa Rica among Others) and has been able to present to top officers and secretaries/ministers about the benefits of Project Management and How it relates to Fiscal Administration.

Because of his consulting experience, he has also worked and presented to executives with Private International Organizations (Some of them that are also part of the PMI Global Executive Council such as Schneider Electric, Entel, Exxon Mobil, Huawei, Federal Reserve, Indra, ZTE).

Brett Trusko has a varied background including consulting, accounting and speaking. He began his career with Coopers and Lybrand where he earned a CPA certification. He became the CFO of a major hospital in the Seattle after which he became a management consultant, becoming global Managing Director in charge of the “Quality and Excellence Practice” at BearingPoint. After 25 years he left consulting for academia in Biomedical engineering, technology management and innovation. He continues to consult and is currently Assistant Professor of Biomedical Informatics at Texas A&M University where he works on Big Data Analytics and Natural Language Processing. He is also a Distinguished Professor at Symbiosis Institute of Business Management in Pune, India. He is the President and CEO of the International Association of Innovation Professionals, a global association of innovation professionals with over 3000 members in 110 countries, and Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Innovation Science. He is also the Secretariat to ISO 279 (Innovation Management Systems), for the United States delegation. He regularly facilitates innovation efforts and strategic planning retreats.

He has a Doctorate in Business Administration and Technology Management and has over 30 years of experience consulting in finance, innovation, quality, strategy, informatics, operations, and administration. He has several professional certifications including Certified Innovation Professional and Manager, Certified Project Manager and a certified Six Sigma Master Black Belt as well as practitioner in “Lean” methods. He has authored several books on quality and innovation. His 2015 book, the "Global Innovation Science Handbook", won a PROSE Award in the category of engineering and technology. He has also published 5 additional books on innovation and quality.