This is the second installment of a five-part series. 

Some weeks ago,  I attended ASQ’s 2022 World Conference on Quality and Improvement (WCQI) with Quality Digest’s editor in chief, Dirk Dusharme, in Anaheim, California. It was the first in-person conference since Covid hit the world, and attendance was just over 1,000, about a third of what had been the norm. 

ASQ made its leadership available for wide-ranging video interviews covering everything from the future of the quality profession to the society’s new legal structure. Quality Digest appreciates their efforts to help us provide valuable reporting to our readers. 

In all, we conducted five interviews with:
• ASQ’s CEO Ann Jordan
• ASQ’s board of directors
• ASQE’s (ASQ Excellence) CEO Jim Templin
• ASQE’s board of directors
• Both CEOs together, talking about their “connected journey”

This second installment is our interview with ASQ’s board of directors. In attendance were:
• Blanton Godfrey, board chair (also a longtime and popular columnist for Quality Digest starting in the late 1990s)
• Wanda Strum, board member, 2023 chair-elect who will be board chair in 2024
• Therese Steiner, board member and chair of the ASQ Diversity Inclusion Task Force

We began by asking the board about the grumblings we hear concerning ASQ and what they are doing about it. We then asked about the alleged exodus of people from the profession, which led to a fascinating discussion about how many in the profession have simply changed their titles, even though their core contribution to their enterprise remains largely the same. For example, the rise in data analytics has meant that some former “quality professional” titles have morphed into “data analyst” or even “data scientist.” 

The clip below shows an excerpt of the interview, where we discussed the topics above. Listen to the full interview here.