Leadership: Managing Up and Delegation

About the Speakers

Brenda K. Zierler PhD, RN, RVT, FAAN, is Professor & Chair, Dept. of Biobehavioral Nursing and Health Informatics, UW School of Nursing; Kaiser Permanente Endowed Nursing Professorship in Chronic Illness Care; Associate Editor, Journal of Interprofessional Care; Co-Lead, Team Science Core, Institute of Translational Health Sciences. Dr. Zierler’s professional background is in nursing with a clinical focus on cardiovascular disease, innovative technologies, and a research focus on health systems/health services related to interprofessional collaborative practice for improving team functioning and patient and systems outcomes. Her primary appointment is in the School of Nursing at the University of Washington, but she holds three adjunct appointments – two in the School of Medicine and one in the School of Public Health. Dr. Zierler has 20 years of experience participating, developing, implementing, and testing team approaches to clinical care, research, and education in a variety of environments.

Dr. Zierler is co-lead of Team Science education and training, for UW’s Institute of Translational Health Science (ITHS) in the UW School of Medicine. She teaches team science and leadership to nursing PhD students and interdisciplinary research teams. She also teaches quality improvement, patient safety and informatics to undergraduate nursing students. Dr. Zierler is a member of ITHS Antiracism Committee and recently completed a sabbatical project focused on Health Equity Quality Improvement Scholar’s Program for Doctor in Nursing Practice students. She is the past Director of Research and Training for the UW Center for Health Sciences Interprofessional Education Practice and Research (2010-2023), and a past member of the Institute of Medicine’s Global Forum on Innovation in Health Professions Education (2012-2018).

Jennifer Sprecher is Director of Strategy Development and Deployment with the School of Nursing. Ms. Sprecher works with organizations to achieve excellence through Strategy development, Lean Project Management, balanced scorecards, change management, benchmarking, team problem solving, team and leadership coaching. Ms. Sprecher is a strong team facilitator, called upon to facilitate high-level teams where interaction and reaching objectives are critical. Sample facilitations include strategic planning, building collaborations, designing and developing new services, products and processes, implementing process improvements, implementing research studies and creating new research centers. She has worked extensively in the past few years within the arena of team science and applying team concepts to innovative development and research teams.

Before the UW School of Nursing, Ms. Sprecher focused exclusively on health research in the Institute of Translational Health Sciences, also within the University of WA. Prior to the UW, she spent 7 years as Executive Director of the Washington State Quality Award (WSQA), a Baldrige-based non-profit organization. With a background in Industrial Engineering, Ms. Sprecher has been working with process improvement for over 25 years using continuous process improvement methods including Lean, Lean-Sigma, Plan Do Check Act and 6S (5S workplace organization combined with Safety) and Total Quality Management. Ms. Sprecher has a bachelor’s degree in Industrial Engineering, a Master’s of Science in Management Systems, is a certified Lean Six Sigma Black Belt and an International Coaching Federation ACC certified Leadership Coach.