Sears is a Certified Lean Six Sigma Master Black Belt with GE Healthcare and also with the Juran Institute; Certified in Lean through the University of Michigan School of Engineering; and an Advanced Statistical Application Expert with the Japanese Union of Scientists and Engineers. 

Sears is a member of the Adjunct Faculty of the University of Richmond MBA program, a sixteenth year Senior Alumni Examiner for the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Program, Lead Judge for the Virginia Senate Productivity and Quality Award, and a past Judge for the U.S. Army Communities of Excellence Award and the Ohio Award for Excellence. 

At BSHSI, a highly successful health care organization with 29 facilities and annual revenues of $2.6 billion, Sears is responsible for performance improvement and knowledge transfer and leads Enhancing Performance Excellence (EPE) and the Emergency Care service line. The EPE initiative – integrating all performance improvement efforts across BSHSI – has achieved a $120 million impact on clinical quality, productivity, supply chain, length of stay, and revenue enhancement and 700+ certified Green Belts and Black Belts in the past three years. 

A recent Joint Commission Journal on Quality and Patient Safety ranks BSHSI 23rd of top 100 systems in quality of care and patient satisfaction. BSHSI has achieved top performer status in the CMS, Premier healthcare alliance value-based purchasing project that rewards hospitals for delivering high quality care and received 45 awards in the Hospital Quality Incentive Demonstration project.