Welcome to the Continuous Improvement Fair!
Tuesday, December 16, 2025
11 a.m. – 4 p.m. (10 AM Early Bird Access)
Mission Bay Conference Center
Robertson Auditorium
1675 Owens Street, San Francisco, California
Agenda
10 - 10:25 a.m. - Early Bird Breakout Block 1 | Robertson Conference Rooms
10:30 - 11 a.m. - Early Bird Networking | Robertson Hallway
10:35 - 11:05 a.m. - Early Bird Breakout Block 2 | Robertson Conference Rooms
11:05 - 11:15 a.m. - Welcome | Robertson Hall
11:15 a.m. - noon - Keynote Speaker | Robertson Hall
Noon - 12:30 p.m. - Lunch | Robertson Hallway
12:30 - 1:30 p.m. - Networking at CI Showcase Booths | Robertson Hall
12:30 - 12:55 p.m. - Breakout Session Block 3 | Robertson Conference Rooms
1:05 - 1:30 p.m. - Breakout Session Block 4 | Robertson Conference Rooms
1:30 - 2 p.m. - Welcome to Project One Training | Robertson Hall
2:15 - 3 p.m. - Leadership Panel Discussion | Robertson Hall
3 - 3:30 p.m. - Awards Ceremony | Robertson Hall
3:30 - 3:45 p.m. - Closing | Robertson Hall
Leadership Panel Discussion
Insights from UCSF leaders on innovation in action, including:
- Erin Gore, Senior Vice Chancellor of Finance and Administration
- Catherine Lucey, Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost
- Dr. Ralph Gonzalez, Associate Dean for Clinical Innovation and Chief Innovation Officer for UCSF Health
Block 1: 10 - 10:25 a.m.
- Billy Reynoso - Driving Operational Excellence Through Collaboration and Innovation (Room 1)
- This session will highlight strategies for strengthening collaboration across teams while implementing innovative solutions to improve service delivery. Learn how General Services is rethinking resource assignments to tackle recycling of lab plastics and turnover of housing units, while reducing budget expenses. Billy will share practical examples from Facilities Services, including Custodial Services, Recycling & Waste Management, Facilities Management, and resource allocation, for example, scaling up the Lab Recycling Program by leveraging existing staff. Attendees will gain insights into balancing strategic growth with day-to-day operations while fostering inclusive, result-driven teams.
- John Watkins and Mike DiPippa - Early Support for Projects (ESP) Program (Room 3)
- This session will introduce UCSF’s Early Support for Projects (ESP) Program, a transformative initiative designed to streamline the early planning phases of capital projects. By providing campus-core-funded technical support, the ESP Program eliminates delays caused by uncertainty in scope, budget, and schedule during the preliminary study phase. Attendees will learn how this program empowers departments with actionable project plans, optimizes project delivery methods, and aligns project funding with UCSF’s strategic objectives. Join us to explore how the ESP Program is paving the way for faster, cost-effective solutions to meet campus needs.
- Lei Choi - Thinking Smarter, Leading Better: Strategic A3 Problem-Solving in Action (Room 4)
- Experience the effectiveness of structured problem-solving through the A3 framework. In this hands-on session, the UCSF Health Continuous Improvement team will guide participants through interactive exercises and real-world examples to demonstrate how clear thinking and collaboration can drive improvement. Walk away with practical tools and strategies to strengthen leadership, align teams, and spark lasting improvement.
- Greg Macway - Context is Everything: Building Smarter AI Prompts with ChatGPT (Coblentz Board Room)
- Learn how to get meaningful, accurate results from ChatGPT by designing prompts that reflect your real work context. In this interactive session, Greg will showcase GregsList: The UCSF AI Persona Gallery—a growing collection of UCSF-specific ChatGPT tools designed to streamline work, enhance communication, and spark creativity. Participants will also have the chance to contribute: bring an example of something you’d like to use an AI prompt for (e.g., drafting emails, summarizing reports, generating ideas). We’ll pick one or two submissions per session and build custom prompts live. Prerequisites: Please bring a laptop and ensure you have an active ChatGPT account (free or Plus).
Block 2: 10:35 - 11 a.m.
- Bernard Jones, Seth Boudsady, and Rashi Ghosh - MAS 9: Transforming Facilities Management with AI (Room 1)
- Learn how CLS Facilities is leveraging technology and AI to sustain UCSF services after a $7M resource reduction—driving efficiency, resilience, and sustainability. We’ll also introduce IBM Maximo 9.1, featuring a generative AI assistant, facility management tools, predictive maintenance, and asset investment planning.
- Frances Mendoza - Cutting Overtime, Boosting Impact: A Lean Approach to Executive Reporting (Room 2)
- This session highlights how Lean A3 problem-solving helped reduce reporting time for UCSF’s Executive Vice Chancellor & Provost by protecting focused workdays, streamlining Smartsheet processes, and standardizing workflows. The project improved efficiency, report quality, and leadership support. Attendees will learn practical ways to apply Lean tools to everyday work challenges.
- James Pease - Collaboration in Design and Construction of our Mega Projects (Room 3)
- Our large, complex campus addition projects, including the Helen Diller Hospital at Parnassus, the BCH Oakland Campus Modernization, and the Proton Therapy at Power Station, require the collaboration of 100s of designers and builders from dozens of companies. Learn about the innovative contract structures, lean principles, and collaborative processes we use to deliver the next $7B of state-of-the-art health care buildings at UCSF.
- Paul Raknes and Michael Hurley - The Future of Change, Built for UCSF (Room 4)
- The Change Management Office is here to turn the challenge of change into UCSF’s greatest opportunity. Built to support our people and mission, the CMO equips leaders, teams, and projects with the tools, guidance, and momentum needed to adapt with confidence and deliver lasting impact. At this year’s Continuous Improvement Fair, step inside the CMO to see how we are shaping the future of UCSF together — fueling innovation, building resilience, and ensuring every transformation succeeds
- Greg Macway - Context is Everything: Building Smarter AI Prompts with ChatGPT (Coblentz Board Room)
- Learn how to get meaningful, accurate results from ChatGPT by designing prompts that reflect your real work context. In this interactive session, Greg will showcase GregsList: The UCSF AI Persona Gallery—a growing collection of UCSF-specific ChatGPT tools designed to streamline work, enhance communication, and spark creativity. Participants will also have the chance to contribute: bring an example of something you’d like to use an AI prompt for (e.g., drafting emails, summarizing reports, generating ideas). We’ll pick one or two submissions per session and build custom prompts live. Prerequisites: Please bring a laptop and ensure you have an active ChatGPT account (free or Plus).
Block 3: 12:30 - 12:55 p.m.
- Charles Conway and Hannah Evans - How to Streamline Workloads and Adapt to a Changing Climate with Facilities Projects (Room 1)
- This presentation explores how we can create general rules to quantify the level of effort required for project management, despite the inherent subjectivity and variability across projects, phases, customers, and managers. By developing a framework to measure and balance workloads, we can ensure more equitable distribution of effort, adapt nimbly as new projects arise, and use the resulting data to streamline project delivery, inform performance metrics (KPIs), and support long-term pipeline and staffing planning.
- Lauren LeLaidier - Reducing Inefficiencies in Research Clinic Scheduling Workflows (Room 2)
- Description: UCSF's Clinical Research Services department provides direct patient care to participants enrolled in clinical trials. Each research study design is unique and can be complex, which means that each patient visit is also unique and often requires complex coordination of time, space, and resources. CRS schedulers create appointments in Apex, as well as in a shared Outlook calendar. Having two scheduling systems is inefficient and can be confusing, as it is duplicative and they do not always match up (i.e., there are two "sources of truth"). This project aims to address these inefficiencies and inconsistencies.
- Scott Muxen - Exploring the intersection of Lean, Technology, and Change Management in design and construction on the BRAB project (Room 3)
- Learn about how new technology is being used in a field PDCA cycle during the design and construction of our BRAB project and explore some of the constraints to broad adoption. New technology, processes, and general change can be difficult to adopt for many people for a variety of reasons. Help me explore how this issue is playing out on the BRAB project where the team is experimenting with multiple new processes and technologies.
- Armanda Edwards-Newman, Brett Gerstenberger, Erik Wieland - Technical Leadership Development Program (Tech LDP): A Decade of Inspiration and Innovation (Room 4)
- The Technical Leadership Development Program (Tech LDP), founded in 2015, blends classroom instruction with leadership lessons and one-to-one mentorship. Over the past decade, six cohorts have successfully completed the program. Throughout this journey, we have worked closely with organizational leadership to keep the program both relevant and inclusive, while continually adapting to meet the demands of a rapidly changing world. In this breakout session, participants will learn practical strategies for launching a leadership program, building strong leadership sponsorship, ensuring inclusivity and relevance for diverse participants, and sustaining momentum with an all-volunteer team. We will highlight the innovations and approaches that have shaped our program and share how consistent evaluation, and year-over-year improvement have been central to its success.
- Mara Bravo - Let's Make Kanban Pizza! (Coblentz Board Room)
- Learn how to apply the concept of Kanban to an existing process or problem by making a pizza. Participants will learn how to visualize Kanban systems and how to modify them through small incremental changes to significantly improve the overall workflow.
Block 4: 1:05 - 1:30 p.m.
- Cathleen Stugard and Bernadette Jimenez - Parking and Transit Solutions for an Evolving UCSF (Room 1)
- Learn how Transportation Services tackled a parking crisis at Parnassus Heights with innovative and strategic solutions to ensure that patients were able to easily park and employees had options to support varied commute needs – all with a look towards the future of a growing UCSF enterprise. See how the multi-pronged strategy incorporates prioritization, options, communication, change management, continuous improvement, and more.
- Ruth Gebrezghi - Leveraging AI and Prompt Engineering to Scale Up the PRP Social Media Recruitment Service (Room 2)
- A look at how a small team scaled social media recruitment using AI-driven prompt engineering. I’ll show how this approach helped us expand growth and overcome bottlenecks in our workflows.
Cassandra Belair and Courtney Strasenburgh - Transforming Daily Operations: Practical Frameworks and Digital Tools for Research Collaboration (Room 3)
Major building renovations and administrative changes prompted our team to rethink communication, collaboration, and resource-sharing in a multi-department research space. What started as a practical necessity evolved into transformative frameworks that improved transparency, minimized disruptions, and strengthened cross-departmental collaboration. This interactive session will explore ‘before and after’ workflows that illustrate how digital tools and practical frameworks improved operations in a multi-department research environment. Join us to explore these tools and workflows.
Aenor Sawyer and Aleksandra Kijac - Innovation Ventures (Room 4)
- Jason Rivera - The Customer's Always Right (Coblentz Board Room)
- We try to follow the principle "the customer is always right", but do we know what the customer really wants to begin with? We could save ourselves a lot of frustration if we could nail down the customer requirements up front. In this hands-on simulation, makers will eventually determine what customers want, and we'll discuss ways to ensure this happens earlier in the process.
CI Showcase Booths
You will have the chance to visit CI showcase booths throughout the event with exciting topics! Engage with the following:
- Anna Rubinsky, IT Academic Research Services - Fostering Community and Innovation Through UCSF’s Generative AI Office Hours
- Bernard Alvarado, Zoom Workspace - UCSF Zoom Workspace
- Jenn Chan, UCSF Real Estate - Creating Exceptional Places for Healing, Discovery, and Learning
- Kate Shimshock, UCSF Campus Life Services, Facilities Services - Facilities Building Usage Analytics and Customer Experience
- Lei Choi, UCSF Health - Continuous Improvement and Lean in Healthcare - Improvement and Leadership Development: Jumpstarting Better Leadership, Better Teams, & Better Problem Solving
- Renae Waneka, UCSF Leadership Institute - Continuous Improvement Through Professional Development
- Salesh Sharma, UCSF Audit & Advisory Services - AuditAlly: Empowering Audit Excellence with AI Innovation
...and more!
UCSF welcomes everyone to our events. If you need a reasonable accommodation to participate in this event due to a disability, please contact Peggy Crovetto by emailing peggy.crovetto@ucsf.edu as soon as possible.