About Us
Our Story
Our History
For 27 years, the Granite State Quality Council (GSQC) has been the nonprofit resource for organizational excellence, starting in New Hampshire and, in 2012, adding Vermont and Maine. In 2019 we evolved to become the ExcellenceNorth Alliance (ENA) reflecting a forward-looking focus to help organizations and communities achieve their goals as the rate of change and disruption continues to dramatically increase across all business sectors. ENA will continue to be the nonprofit providing customized expertise in the Baldrige methodology and other systematic approaches to Northern New England organizations and communities.
About the ENA: The ENA is a conduit to transforming silos of inefficiency into optimized performance systems that build and sustain success for the long-term. We approach this from a Business Ecosystem perspective considering both the external or “Macro” ecosystem that impacts the organization and the “Micro” ecosystem that defines the organization itself.
How We Do This: ENA provides coaching, training, networking, and the sharing of best practices for all business sectors. We also provide a systemic, unbiased, and comprehensive external assessments that identify both an organization’s strengths and opportunities to continuously improve. Organizations that have been assessed can choose to be publicly recognized for their journey towards excellence as part of the region’s Baldrige-based awards and recognition program which we administer.
In the News
Interview
Fred Kocher, Anne Warner, and Buddy Phaneuf discuss how organizations can thrive in a 21st Century World on WMUR’s NH Business.
ENA Leadership Summit
ENA’s 2019 Leadership Summit on Navigating Generational Expectations took place on July 31, 2019 at the Northeast Delta Dental Conference Center in Concord.
Read the article on the Summit by the New Hampshire Union Leader’s Michael Cousineau as part of the What’s Working series.
Board Members
Anne Warner
Executive Director
After 20 years in a corporate environment as a Program and Project Manager, Anne discovered how the Baldrige Framework supports businesses and organizations in achieving excellence and sustaining success. She has been a member of the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award Board of Examiners since 2003, and is an Officer in the nation-wide Alliance for Performance Excellence. Contact Anne on LinkedIn or via Email.
Tom Raffio
Board Chair
President & CEO, Northeast Delta Dental
Tom Raffio is President & CEO of Northeast Delta Dental, which administers the dental benefits of over 876,000 people in Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont. Well known for its customer service, Northeast Delta Dental has been recognized regionally and nationally for its human resource management, corporate social responsibility, and management practices.
Richard Tango-Lowy
Vice Chair
Owner, Dancing Lion Chocolate
Richard is a master chocolatier and small business owner. He currently coaches micro-business entrepeneurs and has served as a Senior Examiner for the GSQC, the Vermont Council for Quality, and WSQA (Washington State Quality Award).
Cathy Frankel
Treasurer
Manager of Customer Service, Northeast Delta Dental
Cathy has been with Northeast Delta Dental for 17 years as the manager of Customer Service. Cathy creates an environment of recognition and motivation for her team, fostering interactive solutions and achieving speed of answer and call abandon rate goals. Customer Service has surpassed customer expectations with an 89% satisfaction rate with dental offices and 90% with subscribers.
Brian Hettrick
Board Secretary
Principal & Chief Adaptability Officer, SMG
Brian and his company help organizations develop high-performance knowledge management systems infused with advanced analytics. His current focus is on the convergence and flow brought about by advances in technology. Brian has spoken at conferences around the world and published articles on quality in different industries. Contact Brian via email or on LinkedIn.
Courtney Scala Smith, JD, MA
Regulatory Counsel, U.S. Food and Drug Administration
Courtney serves as an attorney with the FDA’s Center for Tobacco products, developing and drafting federal rules related to the regulation of tobacco products, in support of the Center’s mission of protecting Americans from tobacco-related death and disease. A native of New Hampshire, she is a Princeton graduate with an MA from the University of Melbourne (Australia) and a JD from the University of Connecticut School of Law.
Kent "Whit" Whitman
Director
Franklin Pierce University – College of Business
US Army, Retired
After retiring from the Army Corps of Engineers, Whit became a Director of Quality Assurance at a NH manufacturing company. He has studied the Quality Management philosophies of Deming, Senge, Juran, Shewhart and many others. Whit has been involved in the GSQC, and now ENA since the early 1990’s. He teaches management and marketing courses at Franklin Pierce University.
Dr. Kevin Riehl
Director Emeritus
Director, Performance Excellence, BAE Systems, Retired
Lieutenant Colonel of the US Air Force, Retired
Kevin led a team of engineers focused on mission success and product assurance to deliver the highest quality products to our warfighters. Kevin is an M.I.T. graduate with a PhD in physics.