Heath Wright

Heath Wright is a leadership coach and organizational systems advisor who helps leaders build healthy organizations that deliver consistent results. He serves as CEO of the Oklahoma Quality Foundation and leads People Focused Solutions, where he works with executives and leadership teams to strengthen leadership, strategy, workforce engagement, and operational performance.
His work draws from the Baldrige Performance Excellence Framework and the Brilliance in the Basics leadership model, helping leaders discover reality clearly, align people and priorities, and multiply results through simple leadership disciplines practiced consistently.

Kaitlin Hixson

A continuous improvement professional and speaker with over 10 years of experience in the healthcare space, I’m passionate about helping organizations simplify complexity, strengthen performance, and build cultures rooted in accountability and growth. I focus on practical, people-centered approaches to continuous improvement, equipping teams with tools and mindsets they can apply immediately to drive meaningful, lasting results. 

Coach Bill Blankenship

Coach Bill Blankenship brings more than four decades of leadership and championship performance to the Journey to Excellence. Over a 41-year coaching career, including 31 years as a high school head coach, he built high-performing programs at Eastwood Christian, Spiro, Edmond Memorial, Union, Fayetteville (AR), and Owasso—earning six state championships and compiling a remarkable 296–90 record. He later served as Head Coach at the University of Tulsa, where his team won a Conference Championship, the Liberty Bowl, and appeared in the Armed Forces Bowl, after earlier collegiate assistant coaching roles at Tulsa and Memphis that included multiple bowl appearances. A native of Spiro, Oklahoma, Blankenship graduated from Spiro High School and was a University of Tulsa football letterman. Throughout his career, he has been known for building disciplined systems, developing leaders, and creating cultures where teams pursue excellence together. Those who have worked with him know he has a rare ability to encourage excellence with only a few words—clarifying the standard, inspiring the effort, and helping people rise to their best. Coach Blankenship and his wife Angie, married since 1978, have three sons, three daughters-in-law, and thirteen grandchildren. 

Erin Cunningham