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New Members Appointed to Baldrige Advisory Board

Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker recently reappointed Rulon Stacey as chair of the Baldrige Program's Board of Overseers. She also appointed three new members to three-year terms and reappointed another member to a second term on the advisory board.

Stacey is president and CEO of Fairview Health Services in Minnesota. He oversees a system encompassing hundreds of primary and specialty care clinics, five community hospitals, and the University of Minnesota Medical Center, Fairview. The organization's 22,000 employees and 2,500 affiliated physicians serve more than 625,000 patients each year. As former CEO of Poudre Valley Hospital System (now part of University of Colorado Health), where he worked for 16 years, Stacey led the health care organization to receive a Baldrige Award in 2008. Stacey has served on the Baldrige Program's Overseers board since 2012; his second term as chair will end on February 28, 2015.

The three new Overseers are Julie Furst-Bowe, Reatha Clark King, and Robert Pence; their terms will end February 28, 2017.

Reatha Clark King is chairman of the board of the National Association of Corporate Directors (NACD) based in Minnesota. Prior to her distinguished career in higher education, philanthropy, and corporate governance, Clark King served as a research chemist at the National Bureau of Standards; the Washington, D.C.-based bureau was the precursor to the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Gaithersburg, Maryland, which houses the Baldrige Program today.

Julie A. Furst-Bowe is chancellor of Southern Illinois University Edwardsville. From 2005 to 2012, Furst-Bowe served as provost and vice chancellor for academic and student affairs at the University of Wisconsin-Stout, the first university to receive the Baldrige Award.

Robert F. Pence is president and CEO of Freese and Nichols, Inc. He led the Texas-based multiservice engineering, architecture, and environmental science firm to receive the Baldrige Award in 2010. The small business became the first engineering and architecture company to earn a Baldrige Award.

Bryan Bushick, who has served on the Overseers board since 2011, was reappointed to a second term that will end on February 28, 2017. He is founder and principal of Falcon Health Solutions, LLC, in North Carolina.

The Board of Overseers meets twice a year, in June and December. It is authorized as an advisory board in Public Law 100-107, the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Improvement Act of 1987. As described in its charter (PDF), the board reviews the work of the private sector contractor(s), which assists the director of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in managing the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award, and makes recommendations for the improvement of the award process as it deems necessary.

Candidates are recruited for consideration for selection through a notice in the Federal Register and a posting of a summary description of the Board of Overseers on the Baldrige Program's website. Individuals are selected for their ability to contribute to the goals and objectives of the Board of Overseers based on the published criteria.

See the full list of members of the Board of Overseers.

Released June 16, 2014, Updated September 21, 2016