Congratulations to St. John's County Health Department
Shands Jacksonville, and the Hillsborough County
Tax Collectors Office, recipients of the initial
2011 Governor's Sterling Sustained Excellence Award.

Dave Klater has spent many years assisting organizations in their continuous improvement journeys.  This includes a 27-year career at BellSouth where Dave held various management and technical positions.  He was involved in leading the implementation of BellSouth’s Total Quality Management Program during the late 1980’s and in driving organizational performance improvement through a Baldrige-based internal assessment initiative during the 1990’s.

Since 1998 Dave has been active as a Management Consultant and has assisted various public and private sector organizations in using Baldrige/Sterling assessments for performance improvement.  Clients include fourteen winners of state quality award programs in Florida, Georgia, North Carolina and Arizona and three Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award winners. He has worked with private sector clients in financial services, telecommunications, broadcasting, information systems and manufacturing; and public sector clients in public health, healthcare, social services, transportation, and state and local government.  He has assisted clients in organizational assessment, strategic planning, leadership development, performance measurement and business process management.

Clients have included: Siemens, Motorola, Merrill Lynch, Turner Studios, Premier Inc, Shands Healthcare, Sonora Quest Laboratories, Florida State Hospital, Florida Department of Health, Miami-Dade County Health Department, Kansas Department of Health and Environment, Hillsborough County Tax Collector’s Office, the Georgia Department of Human Services, St. Johns County Health Department, and the Florida Division of Medical Quality Assurance.

Dave is currently an Alumni Examiner for the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award program (twelve years as an examiner), a Board Member and Master Examiner for the Florida Governor’s Sterling Award Program (15 Years with the Program), the Lead member of the Panel of Judges for the Georgia Oglethorpe Award Program (12 years with the program) and has been a Lead Examiner for the US Army FORSCOM Centurion assessment program.  He is also the lead trainer for examiners for the Georgia Oglethorpe program and Lead Facilitator for the Florida Sterling program. He is a Senior Member of the American Society for Quality and is certified as a Quality Auditor and a Quality Manager by the ASQ.  He also has been trained as an ISO 9000 Lead Auditor.

Dave has a Bachelor’s degree in Engineering Mechanics from Penn State and an MBA from Florida International University.