Dr. Richard Biery served as Director of Health for Kansas City, Missouri for 23 years with policy oversight for indigent medical care systems involving two hospitals, a long-term care facility, five community clinics, and a comprehensive EMS system, as well as all public health functions for the city. He also served in many other city government roles, including chair of the City Ethics Committee. He has been a clinical professor at the University of Missouri in Kansas City, an adjunct professor at the University of Kansas, and a lecturer at the UMKC Bloch School of Business. He holds designations as an M.D., MSPH, and FACPM.In 1998, Dr. Biery stepped down to form his own consulting firm, specializing in helping organizations and ministries, including churches, achieve excellence in board governance, leadership, and management performance. He has become convinced of the importance of high quality ethical governance and customer-focused leadership to achieve high performance.Dr. Biery has extensive experience as a leader in the faith community. He is currently chairman of Avant Ministries International, an international church planting mission using Policy Governance®, for over ten years. His skill set includes board governance, especially Policy Governance® (he is a graduate of the Policy Governance® Academy SM), strategic thinking (including Hoshin Planning), and the performance improvement and measurement sciences.Dr. Biery has extensive experience in speaking and training on a variety of topics to a wide variety of audiences (including national audiences) and has received outstanding ratings by audience surveys.