Executives Embark on Year-Long Fellowship, with Baldrige Framework as Foundation

In April 2023, 17 executives began a year-long leadership development journey in the prestigious Baldrige Executive Fellows Program, the only leadership fellowship that provides one-on-one access to leaders of Baldrige Award recipients. Through planned visits to award recipient sites in Georgia, Pennsylvania, and Virginia, as well as networking with other executives, the Baldrige Executive Fellows will study how world-class U.S. organizations and their senior leaders achieve strategic and operational excellence and stimulate innovation. Within a collegial environment, the Baldrige Fellows will have a unique opportunity to compare the perspectives of executives across sectors, share candid advice on leadership challenges, and use the insights they gain to address a strategic challenge or opportunity within their own organizations as part of their individual capstone projects. 

“The Baldrige Executive Fellows Program is the only executive leadership fellowship that provides one-on-one access to Baldrige Award recipients and the opportunity to learn role-model management strategies from these high-performing executives,” said National Institute of Standards and Technology Director and Under Secretary of Commerce for Standards and Technology Laurie Locascio. To the executives, Locascio stated, “It is our belief that your participation in this program will benefit you personally, your organization, and your organization’s key stakeholders—employees, customers, patients, partners, suppliers, and the larger community. Now is a perfect time for executives with vision and foresight to understand and apply the Baldrige concepts as a means to improving their organization and its sustainability.”

Thirteen years ago, based on an idea on how to better engage U.S. executives, the unique fellowship program was created to inspire senior leaders to embrace a systems perspective in relation to organizational leadership, in pursuit of continuous improvement and innovation for their organizations’ long-term success. Participants have learned through Baldrige Award-winning organizations’ sharing of best practices and innovative strategies, seeing performance excellence in action, and building a peer network of other executives—while using the Baldrige Excellence Framework® as a common language as well as a resource offering guidance for leading organizations to achieve excellence. 

Since its inception in 2010, the Baldrige Executive Fellows Program has graduated more than 135 executives. Graduates’ capstone projects have documented the wide-ranging improvements they’ve designed, including overhauling strategic planning processes, creating high-reliability health care organizations, lessening patients’ reliance on opioids after surgery, improving employee engagement, engaging physicians, overhauling communication processes for diverse workforces, standardizing processes, better preparing students for professional careers, reimagining population health and community health outcomes, and innovating supplier networks. 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, and airports, among other sites, to build understanding of role-model strategies to lead a high-performing organization.

Learn more information on 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 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 2023–2024 Baldrige Excellence Framework®: Proven leadership and management practices for high performance, which includes the regularly revised and world-emulated Criteria for Performance Excellence®. For information, visit https://www.nist.gov/baldrige.