D’Anne Carpenter, executive director of organization learning and development for Trinity Health, Farmington Hills, MI

D’Anne Carpenter, an ASQ member since 1996 and a certified quality manager, worked in quality improvement at the corporate level in healthcare for seven years prior to her current role in leadership development. She also served in hospital operations for 10 years. “Regardless of your function in healthcare, it’s essential that you have some understanding of improvement principles in order to meet customer needs,” Carpenter said.

Having a career that has spanned operations and quality improvement has given her an unusual perspective that strengthens her ability to meet development needs at Trinity Health. “My background has been a tremendous benefit in assuring that we are providing development opportunities to meet current leadership needs and that we are being proactive in anticipating future needs,” Carpenter said.

At Trinity Health, Carpenter provides leadership in the development, implementation and evaluation of learning and development opportunities for staff at all levels. These development opportunities include Trinity Health’s executive orientation, advanced leadership program, strategic leadership program, foundations in leadership program, essentials in leadership program, several annual enterprisewide conferences and online learning programs. In addition, she leads the annual recruitment of postgraduate students for the Trinity Health Fellowship Program. Carpenter also has responsibility for Trinity Health’s annual associate engagement measurement process.

Carpenter is a certified public accountant, and she earned a master’s degree in management from Northwestern University.

Carpenter and her team are constantly assessing the effectiveness of Trinity Health’s leadership development programs and making changes as they identify opportunities for improvement. Quality improvement principles and tools are integrated in each program’s curriculum. Carpenter’s team partners closely with internal performance improvement associates to serve as faculty in leadership development programs. At every level, participants are involved in action learning—applying what they’ve learned to improve work processes. Pre and post-tests are administered to check knowledge and understanding, and follow-up evaluations are conducted with participants’ supervisors to monitor on the job performance “post development.”

Carpenter’s application of quality principles has helped her to earn recognition in the leadership development field. Most recently, she received Chief Learning Officer magazine’s Silver Business Impact Award, presented to “transformational and visionary leaders in enterprise education.” She also led her team at Trinity Health to Bersin and Associates’ Learning Leader Award, which recognizes organizations that have developed and implemented effective and efficient approaches to employee learning and development resulting in significant business improvement. She also received Corporate University Xchange’s Best Practice Award for leadership development for implementing high-impact programs targeted to managers and senior executive leadership.

The big challenge facing Trinity Health today is accomplishing the vision of becoming a trusted health partner for life. To do that, among other things, Trinity Health will need leaders who can tune into the voice of the customer and make effective changes based on what they hear.

“It’s all hard work now,” Carpenter said. “We’ve picked all of the low-hanging fruit.”

Another challenge facing Trinity Health is ensuring that its recruiting and developing leaders who are prepared for the rapidly changing healthcare environment. “We’re constantly looking into the future and developing the competencies people will need to be successful,” Carpenter said.

Carpenter’s advice to professionals new to quality is that quality improvement is essential to all aspects of business. “Quality improvement principles and fundamental tools are vital to successfully addressing the challenges in any industry,” Carpenter said. “If you’re not constantly measuring and improving, you’ll go out of business.”