Kicab Castaneda-Mendez is a business and process improvement professional with 30 years experience as an internal and external consultant to manufacturing, service, healthcare, government, and nonprofit organizations from 21 industries on five continents. He has authored two books and more than 35 articles, spoken at more than 25 conferences, and given more than 50 conference workshops on theory, tools, and applications on achieving performance excellence. He has taught several thousand people at every level from hourly to CEOs and has helped improve processes in the supply chain (marketing, vendors, R&D, engineering, QA/RA, manufacturing, sales), support functions (logistics, HR, IT, legal, finance), and management. He is a three-year Baldrige examiner and five-year Connecticut Award for Excellence senior examiner and trainer. Castaneda-Mendez is a GE-certified Master Black Belt, MBB/BB/GB trainer, and facilitator. He has two master's degrees (statistics and mathematics), a triple major bachelor's degree (mathematics, philosophy, and psychology), and a permanent Secondary teaching Certificate (mathematics) all from The University of Michigan.