About the Author Kent Whitman, (Talks With Animals) better known as Whit, but his Ahnishinahbæótjibway name is Onzaamidoon Wiijayaaw Awakaanag (translates in English to Talks With Animals) Whit was born and raised on a small dairy farm in Massachusetts where he went to grade and high school. Deciding to teach Vocational Agriculture at the high school level, he was the first and only of his siblings to go to college, graduating in 1967 from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, MA, with a Bachelor of Science degree in Animal Science. Upon graduating and because of the Vietnam Conflict, he entered the U.S. Army as an Officer in the Corps of Engineers and was trained as a RANGER. Making the Army a career, he served a distinguishing 20-year period, retiring at the rank of Captain from the Army in 1987. While in the Army, he served in both combat and civil engineering assignments and as an advisor to foreign military engineers and U.S. National Guard and Reserve units. During his service, he earned a Master of Arts degree in Computer Resource Management and Management from Webster University in 1986. During this education he studied many Management gurus including Dr. W. Edwards Deming, Peter Drucker, and a host of others. His Army career brought him to serve and operate both in the United States and in Vietnam, West Germany, Turkey, Egypt, and Honduras. He was deployed five times. He was awarded three Bronze Star awards for his service in Vietnam, a Joint Service Commendation Medal for his service in Honduras, a Meritorious Service Medal for his service in Headquarters’ 4th United States Army, a Navy Meritorious Unit Commendation Medal for participating in Task Force 65 Nimbus Moon clearing landmines from around the Suez Canal in Egypt, among several other service awards and decorations. Upon retiring from the Army, he went to work at PVA-EPVA, Inc. (now out of business) in Wilton, NH. This company was a premium based direct marketing mailing house. Its primary customers were nonprofit organizations doing fund raising activities for their organizational needs which included business activities internationally. While at PVA-EPVA, he worked his way up from initially being assigned as a Department Manager, to Warehouse Manager, to Manufacturing Production Manager and finally the position as Director of Quality Assurance, Business Management Systems and Safety. As the Manufacturing Production Manager, he was responsible for a three-shift operation (often including 7 days per week) including eight major functional areas that produced and shipped up to 5,000,000 pieces of finished goods per week. While serving in his last position, he was the Process Owner (Manager) for the following business processes: Document Control and Process Mapping; Internal Auditing; Business Review; and Corrective and Preventive Action. Whit managed all the Quality Assurance activities and all the Safety activities for the Corporation. In his spare time, he was responsible for publishing the Corporate Newsletter as well as creating and later updating the Corporate Marketing Video. Whit, as he likes to be called, has extensive training and experience in both Quality Management and Corporate Management, both at the Corporate/System level and at the individual process level. As a Granite (NH) State Quality Council Award Examiner in 1997, he is trained in the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award Criteria. He is a trained Internal Auditor. Whit studied the Deming System of Profound Knowledge and 14 Management Obligations under Dr. Michael Quigley, at the Center for Collaborative Leadership, School of Graduate Studies, at Rivier College in Nashua, New Hampshire. He worked with Dr. Quigley in establishing a Deming User Group (now called Deming Study Group) at Rivier College. Whit's extensive training and experience includes International Business Operations; ISO 9000 – 1994 and 2000 Quality Systems; Dr. J. M. Juran's Quality Improvement Tools; Peter Senge's Strategies and Tools for Building a Learning Organization; Six Sigma Process Improvement; Disaster Recover and Business Emergency Preparedness and a host of other Quality Management and Business Management methods, tools, and practices. While at PVA-EPVA, he developed and conducted corporate level Quality Management Training Programs providing training to all levels of employees from the CEO to Production Associates. Currently he is an Adjunct Faculty Professor for Franklin Pierce University instructing undergraduate courses in the College of Business (COB) in the Management and Marketing disciplines. He teaches both at the Rindge Campus and remotely. He develops and teaches Distant Learning modules for COB online courses. Whit teaches nearly all of the Management curriculum courses and some of the Marketing courses. Whit has conducted textbook reviews for McGraw-Hill Publishers. He is a Senior Member of the American Society for Quality and a member of the Board of Directors for the ExcellenceNorth Alliance (ENA) https://excellencenorth.org/. He enjoys reading and studying about a wide variety of topics and he enjoys writing. He has been published in the American Society for Quality - Education Division Newsletter and is currently working on a book about Statistical Process Control. He has written and self-published a book 3 Days and 20 Years An Army Career covering his service as an Army Officer. In addition to his training, he is an artisan who owns and operates his own business of designing and producing custom hand-crafted leather products, birch furniture and glass etchings, and he enjoys many outdoor sports. Because he is part Ahnishinahbæótjibway, he is active in Aboriginal Indigenous cultural activities. In 2010 he was appointed by Governor Lynch to the new New Hampshire Commission on Native American Affairs serving two consecutive terms until November 2015. He is a Black Powder – Muzzleloading enthusiast and member of the Peterborough Sportsmen’s Club in Peterborough, NH. He was the founding President of the Cheshire County Shooting Sports Education Foundation, Inc. a NH nonprofit charitable trust and IRS 501 (c) (3) nonprofit charitable organization in Keene, NH. He has served as a Board of Director Member of the New Hampshire Wildlife Federation. Whit (Talks With Animals) may be reached at: 603-499-2828, whitmank@frnklinpierce.edu , nhwhit@ne.rr.com , and kent.whitman@excellencenorth.org.