Graduate Baldrige Fellows Bring Home Lessons on Excellence

Eighteen senior leaders recently joined more than 165 other executives as graduates of the Baldrige Executive Fellows Program. Using the Baldrige Excellence Framework as their roadmap, the Baldrige Fellows explored how world-class organizations across sectors—Baldrige Award recipients—have achieved performance excellence and stimulated extraordinary innovations.

During the year-long leadership development experience, Baldrige Fellows compared and contrasted leadership strategies from across sectors. They sought solutions and best practices that helped them emerge with a broader perspective on role-model leadership characteristics; strategic planning; workforce and customer support and engagement; innovation; integration of processes, plans, resources, and goals; and measurement of key performance indicators—all to achieve an organization’s desired results.

Best Practices in Action

The cohort began its year-long leadership development program in April 2024 at the Baldrige Program’s 35th Quest for Excellence® Conference. Interactive sessions on visionary leadership, operational intelligence, and leading for engagement included visits to the following Baldrige Award recipient organizations: GBMC HealthCare, Inc., in Maryland, with leadership participation from Stellar Solutions; the Kansas City National Security Campus (KCNSC; formerly called Honeywell Federal Manufacturing & Technologies, LLC) in Missouri, with leadership participation from Mid-America Transplant and the City of Excelsior Springs (Communities of Excellence 2026 award winner); and The Ritz-Carlton Marina del Rey in California, with leadership participation from Alamo Colleges District, Adventist Health White Memorial, and the Charter School of San Diego. Baldrige Fellows also met directly with executives from Baldrige winners Adventist HealthCare (leadership best-practice winner) and Freese and Nichols, Inc., among others.

Capstone Projects Led to Innovative Solutions

Between sessions, the Baldrige Fellows worked on their individual capstone projects, which each addressed a strategic need within their organizations. At the end of the program, capstone presentations showcased each Baldrige Fellow’s progress and planned next steps to benefit their organizations. Capstone projects included developing a virtual access substance abuse program, optimizing staff training, partnering advanced manufacturing with industry and academia, connecting employees to favorable student outcomes, increasing and tracking staff productivity, using data to improve a hospital emergency department, reducing patients’ overall length of stay, optimizing a portfolio through multi-state programs, formalizing the process for selecting and developing board members, reducing unplanned admissions to an intensive care unit, breaking down an organization’s workforce silos, establishing a futures committee, and developing a new service model for rural health.

Peer Network

Throughout the program, the Baldrige Fellows developed a peer network of executives to tap into now and into the future as a way to continue to build the knowledge and capabilities necessary for ongoing organizational success.

Since its inception in 2010, the Baldrige Executive Fellows Program has graduated more than 165 executives. Fellows have come from all sectors of the U.S. economy and have visited and personally met with hundreds of Baldrige Award recipient senior leaders, visiting facilities, factories, hospital floors, hotels, restaurants, parks, and airports, among other sites, to build understanding of role-model strategies to lead a high-performing organization.

Learn more about the Baldrige Fellows and how to apply.

In conjunction with NIST and the private sector, the Baldrige Program manages the Baldrige Award, which was established by Congress in 1987. The Baldrige Program promotes resilience, innovation, and excellence in organizational performance; recognizes the achievements and results of U.S. organizations; and publicizes successful performance strategies. The Baldrige Program also offers the Baldrige Excellence Framework: Proven leadership and management practices for high performance.