Brief Bio
Todd Hatley, Ph.D., is an academic scholar, improvement specialist, consultant, and educator whose work spans quality improvement, innovation, healthcare improvement, operational excellence, and systems-level change. He is currently an Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Wilson College of Textiles at North Carolina State University, where he contributes to the advancement of improvement and innovation education. He has also held an academic appointment as an Adjunct Assistant Professor in Emergency Medicine at the University of North Carolina, reflecting his long-standing engagement with healthcare improvement, emergency services, and applied improvement science.
For more than 20 years, Dr. Hatley has participated in and helped advance NC State’s Lean Six Sigma and performance improvement programs, including work connected to the legacy of Blanton Godfrey, Ph.D. Dr. Godfrey came to NC State following his retirement from the Juran Institute and played a central role in establishing one of the university’s foundational improvement education programs. Dr. Hatley’s work builds on this lineage of quality, statistical thinking, organizational learning, and disciplined improvement.
In 2022, Integral Performance Solutions assumed responsibility for the curriculum supporting NC State’s improvement education offerings. Under Dr. Hatley’s leadership, the program evolved into Programs for Improvement and Innovation, a broader educational framework designed to help individuals, teams, and organizations address complex challenges and achieve meaningful results. This evolution preserved the program’s strong Lean Six Sigma foundation while expanding its scope to include innovation, design, systems, sustainability, executive leadership, and project sponsorship.
The expanded portfolio includes Lean Six Sigma White Belt, Yellow Belt, Green Belt, Black Belt, and Master Black Belt programs, as well as innovation-focused offerings such as Design Thinking, systems and sustainability-oriented courses such as Systems Thinking, and enhanced programs for executives, champions, and project sponsors. Together, these programs reflect Dr. Hatley’s view that modern improvement education must integrate rigorous problem-solving, statistical thinking, human-centered design, systems awareness, and leadership alignment.
Dr. Hatley has also served as an improvement advisor with the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, supporting his academic and professional interest in the application of improvement science to healthcare, emergency medical services, and service environments. His scholarly and consulting interests include Lean Six Sigma, systems thinking, value-based healthcare, reliability, cost transparency, operational performance, and the integration of improvement methods with strategy and organizational learning.
Through his long association with NC State, his connection to the work begun by Dr. Godfrey, his academic roles across multiple colleges and institutions, and his leadership through Integral Performance Solutions, Dr. Hatley continues to carry forward and extend a distinctive improvement tradition—one grounded in the teachings of Juran, Deming, Shewhart, and modern systems thinking, while evolving to meet the demands of contemporary organizations.