Sterling Academy

Making a World of Difference

Sterling Academy - History

In 1994, Dr. Edward A. Popovich launched the consulting company Sterling Enterprises International, Inc. and created Sterling Academy as a resource to provide coaching, training, and consulting with regard to the Florida Sterling Award (Florida's state award based on the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award) and strategic deployment of Six Sigma. Dr. Popovich launched this effort after having spent time in technology and manufacturing industry in the 1980s working with Just-In-Time, Lean methodologies, consulting with several of Dr. W. Edwards Demings disciples and friends, and then later taking a leadership role employing Six Sigma at Motorola, the company that created Six Sigma and was also the 1st winner of the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award.
Dr. Popovich teamed up with other quality leaders to deliver consulting services to organizations such as Jaguar Cars Ltd., Motorola, GE Capital, SONY, Johnson and Johnson, Intuit, Wachovia, Lockheed Martin, J P Morgan, NCR, Florida Department of Environmental Protection, Singapore Air Force, Office of the Surgeon General / US Army Medical Command, and others. The breadth of industries and size of organizations represented a cross section of firms in technology, financial services, manufacturing, and government.
Much was shared while working with these organizations and much was learned. In particular it was observed that there are common success factors that lead to successful deployment of business transformation, quality management, process improvement and innovation.
The USA has a healthcare system that is composed of many sub-systems that do not work well together. Consider the conflicting needs of healthcare insurance, physicians, clinics, and hospitals. For example, physicians are typically not employees of hospitals and as a result conflict in goals and issues with control can impact patient outcomes.
We believe the success factors that drive business transformation and business excellence outside of healthcare can be utilized to drive performance improvement in our healthcare. Indeed, there are success stories from within the healthcare system.
Sterling Academy brings together some leaders, including in healthcare, to bring capability in terms of education / training, leadership, mentoring, and project delivery to enhance organizational and individual performance.

Faculty

Our faculty include distinguished leaders from various industries that lead training, mentor leadership, serve as interim executives, and drive performance enhancement.

Education and Training

We believe that participants want not only good instructors they want teachers who have practiced what they preach. Those who participate in our Education opportunities will have the opportunity to interact with their instructors in discussing approaches to employing what they learn to their actual career or within the organization in which they are employed.