2026 Best Practices for Operational Excellence Presenters

Stephanie Chen leads continuous improvement for The Wendy's Company in Dublin, Ohio. In this role, she focuses on building people and team capabilities, leads process improvement and cost savings initiatives, and provides project and change management thought leadership. Stephanie joined the Wendy's Company in September of 2015, where she led Organizational Development in Human Resources. In that role, Stephanie helped activate the company's Diversity & Inclusion strategy by forming, leading, and advising Wendy's employee resource groups. She also led performance planning and employee development programs for the enterprise. Prior to joining Wendy's, Stephanie led plant manufacturing and continuous improvement for General Mills and Kraft Foods. She holds a BA in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, and a minor in Supply Chain Management from the University of California at Davis.

As the Technology Infrastructure and Computing Leader for Nationwide, every day is about enabling our extraordinary businesses to conduct their operations through resilient, secure, and frictionless infrastructure and technology solutions. Our capable and driven teams have direct responsibility for both cloud and on premise core infrastructure. We believe in using agile delivery, lean management, and positive energy to make us successful. In 2015, I coauthored the book The Lean IT Field Guide (CRC Press). I still regularly consult with companies in a variety of industries across the globe on their lean transformations. I believe we learn best by sharing our experiences and you'll often find me speaking at conferences, hosting guests at Nationwide, or visiting other companies. My passion is using lean thinking to help technology teams create solutions that users love.