Leadership Team

The Center for Business Excellence

Executive Leadership Team
Our executive leadership team includes individuals with backgrounds in corporate, medium and small business, venture startups, government agencies, and nonprofits. Over time, it is our intention to establish ourselves as an independent educational organization, with a Board of Governors and a faculty made up of scholar-practictioners in the fields that contribute to business excellence.

Members of the Executive Leadership Team:

Eric Balinski

President, Synection and Leadership on the Fly

Eric has global expertise in enabling complex businesses to create highly motivated teams that deliver profitable growth and stretch goals. His specialty is in transforming an organization's customer and enterprise performance. Examples of his work include:

Start-up strategy and launching revolutionary customer program that generated $45 million the first year, with 5-year growth exceeding $350 million.

Transformed global strategy for a $500 million business. In 22 months, achieved the highest profit, growth, customer & employee satisfaction in corporation's 37 business units.

Mentored the implementation of a customer value system to turnaround a $430-million business. Within one year, produced a $25 million profit swing.

Prior to starting SYNECTION, he held business leadership roles and was the Global Director of Business Education for two Fortune 100 firms, leading a variety of workforce practices to redefine how these companies competed in the marketplace. In leadership development, he has taught value creation worldwide to every business function, and level. He also held business leadership positions at GE, Dow Chemical, and Allied Signal.

Co-author, with J. Nicholas DeBonis and Phil Allen, Value Based Marketing for Bottom-Line Success (McGraw-Hill, 2002).

CBE Focus:

Performance improvement and achieving breakthrough business results in large and mid-size companies. Marketing strategy. Leadership programs, including Leadership on the Fly.

Recent quote:

"Corporations have lost sight of why they are in business. They are formed to bring together talent and capital to accomplish something that makes a customer's life better - this is where value is created. If the corporation does this well, they make a profit and reward all stakeholders, including investors. Yet, most focus on the thinking of nano-second minded Wall Street analysts, whose incomes depend on 1)making comments about something they themselves have never done, and 2)which depends little on the ultimate success or failure of a company. Who in their right mind would take a golf lesson from someone who had only studied the theory and history of golf? Everyone in a corporation, not just the leaders, needs to look in the mirror and realize that the answer for their success will NOT be found on Wall Street, but in figuring out how their business can again make a difference to the lives of their customers first and secondly, re-igniting the passion of all employees to focus on this mission."

ebalinski@cbe-nj.org
4 Forest Hill Dr, Sparta, NJ 07871
(973) 726-8432

Ron Bell

Director, Bell Consulting

Ronald Bell combines the spiritual and the practical in his professional life. He is an ordained Presbyterian Minister and management consultant, providing corporate training, executive/life coaching, organizational and interpersonal effectiveness, executive team building and employee assistance counseling. He designs and conducts over thirty different workshops on management/supervisory leadership and interpersonal skills. Ron also serves as adjunct faculty for New Jersey's Human Resource Development Institute.

Ron's educational background includes a bachelor's degree in sociology, a master of divinity degree from Princeton Theological Seminary and a master's degree in psychology and counseling, along with clinical training in San Francisco, Chicago and New York City.

He has served as the executive director of three nonprofit human service and community development organizations, as well as president and member of dozens of civic boards and committees, and as the moderator of two radio talk shows on community issues and concerns.

His awards for community service include the Hannah G. Solomon Award from the National Council of Jewish Women, the Law Day U.S.A. Liberty Bell Award from the Somerset County Bar Association and the Distinguished Service Award, as one of the state's Top Five Men from the New Jersey Jaycees.

Author of Spirit in Business and Work (2003).

CBE Focus:

Spirit in Business Forums

rbell@cbe-nj.org
PO Box 6353
Bridgewater, NJ 08807
Phone 908 234-2913 Fax 908-234-2913

Jonathan Cloud

Founder, Center for Business Excellence

Entrepreneur, builder and real estate developer, and research director.

Born in Washington, D.C., Jonathan has lived most of his life outside the U.S., including periods in Mexico, France, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada. He moved back to the U.S. with his family in 1991, and built a computer consulting and Internet development company through the 1990s, serving a variety of corporate clients.

He began his career in construction and real-estate development in Canada in the 1980s, as President and CEO of Sunwrights Multinational Inc. Over the course of a decade he grew this original solar design and research company into a real estate development corporation operating in U.S. and Canada.

Amongst other notable projects, he designed and developed a $13 million residential complex for active senior citizens, which included packaging the project as 100 tax-sheltered investment units and selling 93% of them prior to construction. He arranged financing and contracted architectural, construction, and other professional services for this eight-story building, and also hired and managed an onsite service and marketing staff of five.

Altogether during this period he sold, designed, and managed construction of over 65 residential building projects. He created award-winning applications for passive-solar and energy-efficient technologies, and oversaw a construction staff of 35. In 1985 he received the United Nations Community Environment Award for contributions to solar and renewable energy technologies, conservation, and community development.

He currently lives with his wife Victoria and daughter Ilana in Basking Ridge, NJ. An accomplished public speaker, he has experience in public administration and has run for Township Committee and for Freeholder in Hunterdon County. He is also the founder of the Somerset Hills Business Network and a graduate of Leadership Somerset.

CBE Focus:

Overall development and strategic alliances; Breakfasts with Champions seminar series

jcloud@cbe-nj.org
8 Revere Drive
Basking Ridge, NJ 07920
Phone 908-306-9074 Fax 209-844-2218

J. Michael Hayden

President, Integrative Excellence, Inc.

Mike is an Organizational Management Consultant with a broad background in Business Operations, Sales, Client Services and Support.

While serving as an internal consultant for one of the world's largest independent testing and measurement organizations he led several initiatives in quality improvement and process excellence which accelerated product delivery time by at least 21% and reduced processing errors by over 33%. Mike also managed the development of an innovative learning center that was designed to integrate diverse cross-functional departments into high performance work teams. He accomplished these projects by working closely with the senior leadership team, his Executive Director and through the Executive Vice President/COO.

Mike is recognized as a leader in creating and sustaining business and operational process improvements through targeted analyses of an organizations systems dynamics and the proper application of customer focused relationship management practices.

He has come to call this approach "Integrative Excellence" because it encompasses more than just traditional reengineering of process and revamping of technology to create increased customer value. It includes the "cultural soft side" of business excellence: individual and team leadership development that is aligned properly to the larger framework of the organization. His methods take into account the total enterprise including the market and the client's customers and suppliers.

Throughout his career he has held positions in Organizational Effectiveness (HR), Project Management, Sales and Service, Technical Support and Systems Engineering. He is certified in Change Management for Systems Thinking by the Center for Strategic Management (CA), Strategic Human Resources by Linkage Inc., (MA) and has worked along side internationally recognized consulting firms such as The Highland Group in instituting operational excellence practices and MGTaylor Associates in doing large group interventions to create high performance teams. Mike holds a Bachelors of Science in Psychology from St. Joseph's University.

Since early 2002 Mike has served as the Operations Leader for "CODA", the New Jersey Organizational Development (NJOD) pro-bono OD consulting practice serving NJ nonprofits.

CBE Focus:

Overall development and strategy, relationship management, programs development, Spirit in Business Forums

mhayden@cbe-nj.org
8 Revere Drive
Basking Ridge, NJ 07920
Phone 609-945-4970 Fax 801-681-1556

Rania Kort

Founder and Managing Partner of CollaborativeXchange™

Rania Kort is an organizational improvement leader with 20 years experience in enterprise reengineering, process improvement, project management and IT Management. She has spent a great part of her career as a management consultant and held leadership roles with the top global 'Big 5' Management Consulting firms, and more recently was on a global leadership team as an Associate Partner in IBM's Business Consulting Services. Her leadership positions in PricewaterhouseCoopers Consulting and Coopers & Lybrand Consulting also included leading a management practice, which grew to over 200 consultants in her role as Managing Director.

Rania has a proven track record in successfully driving large-scale multi-million dollar global initiatives and change management projects focused on increasing efficiency, effectiveness and speed-to-market. She has provided senior executives with the framework, methods and tools to drive improved results. Her belief is that improvement initiatives can only succeed and sustain when there is a strong "systems" foundation that fosters a "culture of collaboration". This premise has driven her to pay in-depth attention to the critical effects of change on people and how to best drive processes and leadership principles that creates the right focus, leverages people's experience, and brings out the individual interests to create the right collaborative behaviors that achieve needed results.

She has worked with clients such as United Parcel Service, Metlife, Columbia House, Time Warner, Siemens, Prudential, NJ Natural Gas, Lucent, Johnson & Johnson, Dun & Bradstreet, Schering Plough, Chase Manhattan, California State Auto Association, American Eagle Outfitters, AT&T and Merck. A good part of her career was also spent in small and mid-size businesses including creating the infrastructure and the operation of a $25million start-up venture, and was part of reengineering a $1 billion construction management company's operations from end-to-end.

Rania's personal background has dealt with a lot of change growing up. She lived in many different countries across East Africa, Europe and the Middle East for over 14 years. Her educational background is in sociology, communications, and information management. She has a strong Project Management, IT Management and organizational development focus and holds a Bachelors degree and two Masters degrees from Syracuse University.

CBE Focus:

Overall development and strategy; small business; team development

rkort@cbe-nj.org
152 Matthews Farm Road
Belle Mead, NJ 08502
908-874-3414

Paula Portner

Director, Strategic Marketing Design Group

A corporate marketing professional, Paula's strong leadership and proven ability to bring together all aspects of the corporate marketing plan have been the keys to her success for over 20 years.

Blending a unique ability to conceptualize, analyze, implement and present in a creative manner, Paula has experience working with business-to-business organizations in a variety of industries.

From strategy development to practical implementation, Paula has worked with professional service organizations, seminar and conference providers and professional continuing educational organizations, helping them build their brand identity, coordinate and managed programs, and serve as a key team member of new product development teams.

CBE Focus:

Marketing and conference planning

pportner@cbe-nj.org
402 Main Street, Suite 100/299
Metuchen, NJ 08840
Phone 732-261-1157 Fax 270-637-9891

Joyce Wackenhut, Ph.D.

Independent Consultant -- click here to view/download complete resume

Joyce Wackenhut has over 20 years of program development, training, program coordination, fundraising and research experience in education, corporate and nonprofit sectors including workshop design and facilitation, teaching, special events, writing, quantitative and qualitative research, data analysis, presentations, and advertising strategy development.

Most recently she was Director, Special Events for the American Cancer Society in Central New Jersey, responsible for fundraising and event coordination in a large geographic area. In particular, she was responsible for 130% attainment of goal collectively over three special events this year; developed a completely new start up of a Relay For Life event drawing 1,000+ participants; and coordinated the activities of several corporate, community and educational organizations

Prior to that she was Branch Manager for the American Red Cross of Central New Jersey, responsible for community building, board development, fundraising & event coordination.

From 1990 to 2001, she was an education consultant in New Jersey and New York City. She coordinated and developed an ACES (Arts Create Excellent Schools) initiative, a statewide education reform model supported by a partnership of the New Jersey State Department of Education, New Jersey State Council on the Arts and the Alliance for Arts Education. Concurrently she was a trainer and facilitator designing and conducting workshops and strategic planning sessions for the staff and Board of Directors of local nonprofit organizations including the Hillsborough Township, Somerset Hills YMCA, RideWise of Raritan Valley, Somerset Alliance for the Future, the Arc of Monmouth County and others.

She has also worked in marketing, advertising, and consumer research for Young & Rubicam (serving such clients as Kraft, Gillette, General Foods, American Greetings, US Postal Service); and for Yankelovich, Skelly and White (serving Dow Jones, AT&T, The Wall Street Journal, General Electric, American Express).

She graduated with an M.A. and Ph.D in Psychology from the City University of New York, and a B.A. in Psychology/Fine Arts from Hunter College. Her community involvement activities include The Giving Network, Leadership Somerset, and the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Somerset Hills.

CBE Focus:

Win-win Partnerships (business-nonprofit alliances); Spirit in Business Forums; grant writing

jwackenhut@cbe-nj.org
607 Bayley Court,
Bridgewater, NJ 08807
908-526-2278

Last updated February 16, 2004

8 Revere Drive, Basking Ridge, NJ 07920
908-306-9074 info@cbe-nj.org

	Eric Balinski
	President, Synection and Leadership on the Fly
	Eric has global expertise in enabling complex businesses to create highly motivated teams that deliver profitable growth and stretch goals. His specialty is in transforming an organization's customer and enterprise performance. Examples of his work include: Start-up strategy and launching revolutionary customer program that generated $45 million the first year, with 5-year growth exceeding $350 million. Transformed global strategy for a $500 million business. In 22 months, achieved the highest profit, growth, customer & employee satisfaction in corporation's 37 business units. Mentored the implementation of a customer value system to turnaround a $430-million business. Within one year, produced a $25 million profit swing. Prior to starting SYNECTION, he held business leadership roles and was the Global Director of Business Education for two Fortune 100 firms, leading a variety of workforce practices to redefine how these companies competed in the marketplace. In leadership development, he has taught value creation worldwide to every business function, and level. He also held business leadership positions at GE, Dow Chemical, and Allied Signal. Co-author, with J. Nicholas DeBonis and Phil Allen, Value Based Marketing for Bottom-Line Success (McGraw-Hill, 2002).
CBE Focus:	Performance improvement and achieving breakthrough business results in large and mid-size companies. Marketing strategy. Leadership programs, including Leadership on the Fly.
Recent quote:	"Corporations have lost sight of why they are in business. They are formed to bring together talent and capital to accomplish something that makes a customer's life better - this is where value is created. If the corporation does this well, they make a profit and reward all stakeholders, including investors. Yet, most focus on the thinking of nano-second minded Wall Street analysts, whose incomes depend on 1)making comments about something they themselves have never done, and 2)which depends little on the ultimate success or failure of a company. Who in their right mind would take a golf lesson from someone who had only studied the theory and history of golf? Everyone in a corporation, not just the leaders, needs to look in the mirror and realize that the answer for their success will NOT be found on Wall Street, but in figuring out how their business can again make a difference to the lives of their customers first and secondly, re-igniting the passion of all employees to focus on this mission."
	ebalinski@cbe-nj.org 4 Forest Hill Dr, Sparta, NJ 07871 (973) 726-8432

	Ron Bell
	Director, Bell Consulting
	Ronald Bell combines the spiritual and the practical in his professional life. He is an ordained Presbyterian Minister and management consultant, providing corporate training, executive/life coaching, organizational and interpersonal effectiveness, executive team building and employee assistance counseling. He designs and conducts over thirty different workshops on management/supervisory leadership and interpersonal skills. Ron also serves as adjunct faculty for New Jersey's Human Resource Development Institute. Ron's educational background includes a bachelor's degree in sociology, a master of divinity degree from Princeton Theological Seminary and a master's degree in psychology and counseling, along with clinical training in San Francisco, Chicago and New York City. He has served as the executive director of three nonprofit human service and community development organizations, as well as president and member of dozens of civic boards and committees, and as the moderator of two radio talk shows on community issues and concerns. His awards for community service include the Hannah G. Solomon Award from the National Council of Jewish Women, the Law Day U.S.A. Liberty Bell Award from the Somerset County Bar Association and the Distinguished Service Award, as one of the state's Top Five Men from the New Jersey Jaycees. Author of Spirit in Business and Work (2003).
CBE Focus:	Spirit in Business Forums
	rbell@cbe-nj.org PO Box 6353 Bridgewater, NJ 08807 Phone 908 234-2913 Fax 908-234-2913

	Jonathan Cloud
	Founder, Center for Business Excellence
	Entrepreneur, builder and real estate developer, and research director. Born in Washington, D.C., Jonathan has lived most of his life outside the U.S., including periods in Mexico, France, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada. He moved back to the U.S. with his family in 1991, and built a computer consulting and Internet development company through the 1990s, serving a variety of corporate clients. He began his career in construction and real-estate development in Canada in the 1980s, as President and CEO of Sunwrights Multinational Inc. Over the course of a decade he grew this original solar design and research company into a real estate development corporation operating in U.S. and Canada. Amongst other notable projects, he designed and developed a $13 million residential complex for active senior citizens, which included packaging the project as 100 tax-sheltered investment units and selling 93% of them prior to construction. He arranged financing and contracted architectural, construction, and other professional services for this eight-story building, and also hired and managed an onsite service and marketing staff of five. Altogether during this period he sold, designed, and managed construction of over 65 residential building projects. He created award-winning applications for passive-solar and energy-efficient technologies, and oversaw a construction staff of 35. In 1985 he received the United Nations Community Environment Award for contributions to solar and renewable energy technologies, conservation, and community development. He currently lives with his wife Victoria and daughter Ilana in Basking Ridge, NJ. An accomplished public speaker, he has experience in public administration and has run for Township Committee and for Freeholder in Hunterdon County. He is also the founder of the Somerset Hills Business Network and a graduate of Leadership Somerset.
CBE Focus:	Overall development and strategic alliances; Breakfasts with Champions seminar series
	jcloud@cbe-nj.org 8 Revere Drive Basking Ridge, NJ 07920 Phone 908-306-9074 Fax 209-844-2218

	J. Michael Hayden
	President, Integrative Excellence, Inc.
	Mike is an Organizational Management Consultant with a broad background in Business Operations, Sales, Client Services and Support. While serving as an internal consultant for one of the world's largest independent testing and measurement organizations he led several initiatives in quality improvement and process excellence which accelerated product delivery time by at least 21% and reduced processing errors by over 33%. Mike also managed the development of an innovative learning center that was designed to integrate diverse cross-functional departments into high performance work teams. He accomplished these projects by working closely with the senior leadership team, his Executive Director and through the Executive Vice President/COO. Mike is recognized as a leader in creating and sustaining business and operational process improvements through targeted analyses of an organizations systems dynamics and the proper application of customer focused relationship management practices. He has come to call this approach "Integrative Excellence" because it encompasses more than just traditional reengineering of process and revamping of technology to create increased customer value. It includes the "cultural soft side" of business excellence: individual and team leadership development that is aligned properly to the larger framework of the organization. His methods take into account the total enterprise including the market and the client's customers and suppliers. Throughout his career he has held positions in Organizational Effectiveness (HR), Project Management, Sales and Service, Technical Support and Systems Engineering. He is certified in Change Management for Systems Thinking by the Center for Strategic Management (CA), Strategic Human Resources by Linkage Inc., (MA) and has worked along side internationally recognized consulting firms such as The Highland Group in instituting operational excellence practices and MGTaylor Associates in doing large group interventions to create high performance teams. Mike holds a Bachelors of Science in Psychology from St. Joseph's University. Since early 2002 Mike has served as the Operations Leader for "CODA", the New Jersey Organizational Development (NJOD) pro-bono OD consulting practice serving NJ nonprofits.
CBE Focus:	Overall development and strategy, relationship management, programs development, Spirit in Business Forums
	mhayden@cbe-nj.org 8 Revere Drive Basking Ridge, NJ 07920 Phone 609-945-4970 Fax 801-681-1556

	Rania Kort
	Founder and Managing Partner of CollaborativeXchange™
	Rania Kort is an organizational improvement leader with 20 years experience in enterprise reengineering, process improvement, project management and IT Management. She has spent a great part of her career as a management consultant and held leadership roles with the top global 'Big 5' Management Consulting firms, and more recently was on a global leadership team as an Associate Partner in IBM's Business Consulting Services. Her leadership positions in PricewaterhouseCoopers Consulting and Coopers & Lybrand Consulting also included leading a management practice, which grew to over 200 consultants in her role as Managing Director. Rania has a proven track record in successfully driving large-scale multi-million dollar global initiatives and change management projects focused on increasing efficiency, effectiveness and speed-to-market. She has provided senior executives with the framework, methods and tools to drive improved results. Her belief is that improvement initiatives can only succeed and sustain when there is a strong "systems" foundation that fosters a "culture of collaboration". This premise has driven her to pay in-depth attention to the critical effects of change on people and how to best drive processes and leadership principles that creates the right focus, leverages people's experience, and brings out the individual interests to create the right collaborative behaviors that achieve needed results. She has worked with clients such as United Parcel Service, Metlife, Columbia House, Time Warner, Siemens, Prudential, NJ Natural Gas, Lucent, Johnson & Johnson, Dun & Bradstreet, Schering Plough, Chase Manhattan, California State Auto Association, American Eagle Outfitters, AT&T and Merck. A good part of her career was also spent in small and mid-size businesses including creating the infrastructure and the operation of a $25million start-up venture, and was part of reengineering a $1 billion construction management company's operations from end-to-end. Rania's personal background has dealt with a lot of change growing up. She lived in many different countries across East Africa, Europe and the Middle East for over 14 years. Her educational background is in sociology, communications, and information management. She has a strong Project Management, IT Management and organizational development focus and holds a Bachelors degree and two Masters degrees from Syracuse University.
CBE Focus:	Overall development and strategy; small business; team development
	rkort@cbe-nj.org 152 Matthews Farm Road Belle Mead, NJ 08502 908-874-3414

	Paula Portner
	Director, Strategic Marketing Design Group
	A corporate marketing professional, Paula's strong leadership and proven ability to bring together all aspects of the corporate marketing plan have been the keys to her success for over 20 years. Blending a unique ability to conceptualize, analyze, implement and present in a creative manner, Paula has experience working with business-to-business organizations in a variety of industries. From strategy development to practical implementation, Paula has worked with professional service organizations, seminar and conference providers and professional continuing educational organizations, helping them build their brand identity, coordinate and managed programs, and serve as a key team member of new product development teams.
CBE Focus:	Marketing and conference planning
	pportner@cbe-nj.org 402 Main Street, Suite 100/299 Metuchen, NJ 08840 Phone 732-261-1157 Fax 270-637-9891

	Joyce Wackenhut, Ph.D.
	Independent Consultant -- click here to view/download complete resume
	Joyce Wackenhut has over 20 years of program development, training, program coordination, fundraising and research experience in education, corporate and nonprofit sectors including workshop design and facilitation, teaching, special events, writing, quantitative and qualitative research, data analysis, presentations, and advertising strategy development. Most recently she was Director, Special Events for the American Cancer Society in Central New Jersey, responsible for fundraising and event coordination in a large geographic area. In particular, she was responsible for 130% attainment of goal collectively over three special events this year; developed a completely new start up of a Relay For Life event drawing 1,000+ participants; and coordinated the activities of several corporate, community and educational organizations Prior to that she was Branch Manager for the American Red Cross of Central New Jersey, responsible for community building, board development, fundraising & event coordination. From 1990 to 2001, she was an education consultant in New Jersey and New York City. She coordinated and developed an ACES (Arts Create Excellent Schools) initiative, a statewide education reform model supported by a partnership of the New Jersey State Department of Education, New Jersey State Council on the Arts and the Alliance for Arts Education. Concurrently she was a trainer and facilitator designing and conducting workshops and strategic planning sessions for the staff and Board of Directors of local nonprofit organizations including the Hillsborough Township, Somerset Hills YMCA, RideWise of Raritan Valley, Somerset Alliance for the Future, the Arc of Monmouth County and others. She has also worked in marketing, advertising, and consumer research for Young & Rubicam (serving such clients as Kraft, Gillette, General Foods, American Greetings, US Postal Service); and for Yankelovich, Skelly and White (serving Dow Jones, AT&T, The Wall Street Journal, General Electric, American Express). She graduated with an M.A. and Ph.D in Psychology from the City University of New York, and a B.A. in Psychology/Fine Arts from Hunter College. Her community involvement activities include The Giving Network, Leadership Somerset, and the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Somerset Hills.
CBE Focus:	Win-win Partnerships (business-nonprofit alliances); Spirit in Business Forums; grant writing
	jwackenhut@cbe-nj.org 607 Bayley Court, Bridgewater, NJ 08807 908-526-2278