Karen Whitley Bell, in collaboration with Steve Bell, has championed the convergence and collaboration across technology communities (including DevOps, Agile, Scrum, ITIL, and others) through shared Lean principles and management practices in order to help enterprises simultaneously achieve operational excellence and rapid innovation. Together their Lean leadership insights and coaching and consulting are available in a variety of contexts, including using Lean to connect strategy with prioritized and sustained execution, conducting end-to-end value stream analysis and improvement (Kaizen) to accelerate enterprise DevOps and digitization investments, strategic advisory and coaching for Lean/Agile transformation planning and capability development, and applying Industrial Internet, Big Data analytics, automation, additive manufacturing, and other emerging/converging technologies for supply chain transformation and disruption.

She contributed to Steve Bell’s books, Run Grow Transform, Lean IT, and Lean Enterprise Systems, and his numerous articles and other publications. In 2014 she retired from a 20-year healthcare career to join Steve full time as collaborator and coauthor.

Together with Steve, she believes that Lean thinking can help improve the quality of life for the billions of people living at the bottom of the economic pyramid. As cofounder of Lean4NGO, she is a passionate advocate for microfinance and microenterprise and believes that every individual on the planet can be a Lean startup. She can be reached at experts@cutter.com.