Tamara Saltman consults on process improvement projects for a wide range of organizations with a focus on government agencies, public service organizations, grassroots organizers, and universities. She specializes in helping teams improve individual processes, design and implement management tools that improve line-of-sight between managers, workers, and users, and training teams and individuals on core lean ideas and techniques. She sees problems as opportunities for improvement and knows that bad processes and poor communication are holding many teams and organizations back. She specializes in helping teams identify their problems clearly, define what it would look and feel like to fix them, choose the solutions that will work best for them, and put in place practices and structures to make those solutions stick.
Tamara led the design and implementation of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Lean Management System, built and managed one of the first lean teams at EPA, and regularly facilitates process improvement, strategic planning, and other high energy conversations.
Tamara received a B.S. in Natural Resources Management with a concentration in American Indian and Indigenous Studies from Cornell University, an M.S. in Marine Biology and Biochemistry from the University of Delaware, and an M.S.W. from The Catholic University of America School of Social Work. She has spent 27 years working and volunteering in a wide variety of organizations, including the MidCoast Community Chorus, the U.S. EPA, the City of New Haven, the Washington DC VA Hospital, Calvert Hospice, Inova Alexandria Hospital, the Ecological Society of America, and the choir of the New York Avenue Presbyterian Church. She was certified as a lean black belt by Mark Adrian in 2017 and maintains her license as a Maine licensed master social worker.
Testimonials about Tamara:
- “Tamara doesn’t just facilitate Lean events—she designs lasting transformation. Over a decade ago, she started guiding our team through a series of complex process improvements, helping us set outcomes that seemed ambitious at the time. Today, after many wins and structural transformations, our actual results hit those projections dead-on. That rare ability to combine visionary planning with enduring efficiency has saved thousands of hours, freed up critical capacity, and forever elevated how our agency serves the public.”
- “Tamara is awesome!”
- “The most helpful thing? Honestly just the clear approach to problem identification followed by the solution process. I will be using this in my personal life. I wish we had more time… absolutely fantastic.”
- “Great job! Super valuable to me, tackling a long-standing issue. This demonstrates how to get buy-in and show shared issues.”
- “Thank you! You helped us work through issues we hadn’t been able to break down before.”