Mike Patil

Over the last thirty years, Mike has initiated and managed business transformation in high-tech, telecomm, consumer electronic products sectors, as well as in higher education. His expertise has been in analyzing the organizational challenges and envisioning and managing opportunities make the business operations lean and efficient. He has worked as a senior executive in Ericsson and Ericsson/GE, and has lead major initiatives in global companies such as American Express/AMS and IBM. The last seven years he has been with the University of North Carolina, three of which as the Executive Associate Dean of the School of Pharmacy and the other four in the current position that was specifically created to make UNC-CH streamlined and cost efficient. In this role, Mike has been given charge to investigate ten operational areas within UNC-CH, with an overall goal of reducing the expenses by $70million over five years.

Given the decentralized nature of the University, Mike faced a difficult question: how to get acceptance for and participation in the improvement initiatives since there was no mandate from the top. He designed and implemented an innovative self-directed solution that has created bottom-up creation and implementation of efficiency efforts. This comparative metrics based approach has helped UNC-CH save over $61 million in just over four years through about 118 employee driven projects..