Discover the Impact of Serving as a TPE Examiner
Every year, The Partnership for Excellence (TPE) brings together a dedicated group of volunteer examiners who believe organizations can always grow stronger, serve better, and reach higher. These volunteers give their time, energy, and insight to help organizations continue their journeys toward excellence. What they discover along the way is powerful: the examiner experience does not simply ask them to contribute—it inspires them, challenges them, and gives back in lasting ways.
Serving as a TPE Examiner is a meaningful professional development experience rooted in the Baldrige Excellence Framework®. Examiners learn, evaluate, collaborate, and provide feedback that can help organizations recognize their strengths and uncover new opportunities for improvement. In the process, they gain practical wisdom, build lasting connections, and return to their own organizations with a renewed sense of purpose and possibility.
Why the TPE Examiner Experience Matters
- Engage in a challenging and energizing learning experience
The examiner role stretches the mind and energizes the spirit. Each application presents a different organization, a different story, and a different opportunity to learn. Examiners think creatively, strategically, and objectively as they evaluate evidence and contribute to meaningful feedback. For professionals who are curious, growth-minded, and committed to improvement, the experience can be both demanding and deeply rewarding.
- Gain in-depth training in the Baldrige Excellence Framework®
The Baldrige Excellence Framework® offers a powerful way to understand what helps organizations thrive. Through examiner training and hands-on application, TPE Examiners deepen their understanding of leadership, strategy, customers, workforce, operations, measurement, and results. That knowledge becomes more than professional development—it becomes a lens for seeing improvement opportunities everywhere and helping their own organizations move forward with greater clarity and confidence.
- Apply hands-on learning to real organizations
Examiner work is not theoretical—it is grounded in real organizations, real challenges, and real opportunities for progress. By reviewing applications and understanding organizational systems, examiners help applicants see where they are strong and where they can grow. That practical experience strengthens an examiner’s ability to lead, coach, support improvement efforts, and contribute meaningfully in any sector.
- Strengthen analytical and communication skills
Examiners learn to look beneath the surface of organizational systems, identify meaningful patterns, and recognize what truly drives sustained performance excellence. They also learn to write clear, actionable feedback and work through consensus with a team. These experiences sharpen critical thinking, strengthen communication, and build the kind of confidence that helps leaders influence improvement long after the examiner cycle ends.
- Benchmark against high-performing organizations
Few professional development opportunities provide such direct exposure to how organizations pursue excellence in real life. Examiners see how applicants approach leadership, strategy, customer engagement, workforce development, operations, and results. These insights can spark fresh ideas, broaden perspective, and inspire examiners to bring new possibilities back to their own teams and organizations.
- Build a network of excellence-minded professionals
The TPE examiner community brings together people who care deeply about excellence, service, learning, and impact. It includes leaders, strategists, quality professionals, educators, health care experts, nonprofit leaders, government professionals, and continuous improvement advocates. Serving as an examiner opens the door to conversations, relationships, and shared learning with people who are committed to making organizations—and the communities they serve—better.
- Give back to organizations and communities
TPE Examiners contribute to something larger than themselves. Their work helps organizations improve the way they serve customers, patients, students, employees, and communities. Their feedback can support stronger systems, better services, more resilient operations, and improved outcomes. For many examiners, this sense of service—the chance to help others move closer to excellence—is the most meaningful reward of all.
Becoming a TPE Examiner is more than a volunteer opportunity. It is an invitation to grow, to connect, to serve, and to see excellence from a new perspective. It is a chance to bring value back to your organization while helping other organizations advance their missions. If you are seeking a professional development experience that can challenge your thinking, expand your network, and renew your commitment to improvement, serving on the TPE Board of Examiners may be the next meaningful step in your journey.
Who should apply?
TPE welcomes professionals from business, health care, education, nonprofit, government, and other sectors who bring curiosity, commitment, and expertise in areas such as leadership, governance, operations, workforce, customers and markets, finance, strategy, organizational learning, community collaboration, quality, continuous improvement, and performance excellence. Whether you are an experienced improvement professional or a leader eager to deepen your understanding of organizational excellence, the examiner experience can broaden your perspective and strengthen your impact.
Ready to make a difference?
- Step forward to serve as a volunteer on the TPE Board of Examiners.
- Grow through meaningful experience in organizational assessment and performance excellence.
- Strengthen analytical, consensus-building, communication, and systems-thinking skills.
- Connect with leaders who are committed to continuous improvement and personal growth.
- Help organizations across the TPE region move closer to excellence.
As JoAnn Sternke, a master examiner with the Baldrige Board of Examiners who led her school district to earn the 2013 Baldrige Award, shared in Blogrige, “Being an examiner allows you to learn the how.” That is the heart of the examiner experience: discovering how excellent organizations achieve results, then carrying those lessons forward to help others grow, improve, and succeed.
To learn more about becoming a TPE Examiner, go to Become an Examiner | The Partnership for Excellence | OH, IN, WV, IL
