Airica Steed, vice president of professional services and operations excellence, Advocate Condell Medical Center, Libertyville, IL

Airica Steed, an ASQ member, is vice president of professional services and operations excellence for Advocate Condell Medical Center in Libertyville, IL. She is a member of the senior executive team and spearheads organizationwide transformation, leveraging multi-faceted strategies inclusive of Malcolm Baldrige Quality Award framework, lean, Six Sigma, change leadership and transformational leadership concepts. She is also responsible for leading strategic efforts, such as clinical services lines operations management, service-line programmatic planning, corporate system integration and clinical informatics.

Additionally, Steed holds a part-time faculty position at Chicago’s Loyola University School of Business Administration in a specialized MBA program focused on healthcare management. She also owns and operates a consulting practice specializing in bridging performance gaps in people, process, knowledge, leadership and technology. Steed has written book chapters and articles, contributed to other written work on leadership and organizational change, and has been an active presenter in the industry.

Her years of experience have given her the opportunity to become familiar with multiple facets of leadership, including but not limited to: ethical leadership and management, operations improvement, mergers/acquisitions/integration, market development, technology enablement and physician partnership.

Steed earned a bachelor’s of science degree in nursing from Rush University in Chicago and an MBA from Governors State University in University Park, IL. She is currently pursuing a doctorate in ethical leadership from Olivet Nazarene University in Bourbonnais, IL, and is on track to obtain the degree in May. Her doctorate is geared toward transformational change in healthcare from a leadership perspective, specifically concentrating on leveraging the lean system change philosophy.

Her specific leadership competencies include:

• Organizational reform and transformation.
• Ethical leadership and management.
• Malcolm Baldrige Award examiner.
• Outcome and data driven.
• Organizational effectiveness.
• Change leadership and innovation.
• Strategic and tactical planning.
• Lean and Six Sigma trained.

 
Steed also provided some insight into healthcare and quality: “It is my firm belief the critical link that is absolutely essential to any quality effort is change leadership. In essence, it is absolutely necessary to have leaders who are accountable, credible and visible to lead and sustain transformative change efforts. It is essential to establish leadership development programs to equip leaders to build teams and collaborate, understand change and process improvement, critically think and problem solve, and develop strategies to transform their organizations into continuous learning cultures.”

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