Diane Cooper

Diane Cooper is Culmen International's Corporate Director of Quality Management. She has 25+ years’ experience managing Quality, Compliance, and Risk for large and small businesses in an efficacious manner. Her streamlined procedures for thorough and effective (yet practical) Risk, Compliance, and Program Management have been rated as best practices in formal CMM-Based Assessments and CMMI Appraisals. Diane has also managed several DoD Mentor-Protégé programs for government contractors, U.S. Army, and U.S. Air Force, including an outstanding Mentor-Protégé Program nominated for the 2018 Nunn-Perry Award.

Prior to joining Culmen, Diane led Business Process Solutions as CEO and Principal Consultant where she provided SME and consulting support to many commercial and government organizations including the National Weather Service, U.S. Army Recruiting Command Electronic Data Systems, and British Petroleum. Diane led the effort for concurrent implementation of SW-CMM and ISO 9000:2000 procedures within a large partnered (government & industry) organization. The organization was the first in the Army Personnel Command to achieve CMM Level 3. That achievement was part of a five-point nomination to the Pentagon for the 2001 Department of Defense CIO Award, which it won. As Senior Process Engineer of the Global Process Improvement team for General Motors, Diane defined and documented the role of the Process & Quality Assurance Engineers within the GM Software (SW) & Controls organization and then played a significant role in the merged SW & Controls/Powertrain organization to create a common set of processes across the many divisions and vehicle programs of GM to help facilitate the organizational turnaround.

Diane holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Information Systems (CIS), a Master of Business Administration (MBA), and is a Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) Candidate for Business Management with a Focus on Leadership and Organizational Change. As author of three top-selling books on the Capability Maturity Models (CMM/CMMI) under her previous name (Diane M. Burwick), she is recognized for her outstanding contributions to the field of process improvement and her considerable expertise in CMMI and the ISO standards. She is also a Certified Quality Auditor (CQA) from the American Society of Quality and is trained and experienced as an ISO Lead Auditor, FedRAMP Assessor, A2LA Accreditation Council Member, and CMMI Appraiser.