Our Team
Elizabeth Were
Business Process Improvement Lead/ Managing Partner
“I get easily frustrated when staff and organizations believe inefficiencies are an inherent part of work and over time get comfortable with poor performance. This is why I founded SORT – an enterprise focused on implementing simple systems to help leaders eliminate waste and build high performance teams while maximizing the resources at their fingertips.”
These are the words of Elizabeth Were, the brain and muscles behind this dynamic company called SORTAgile. She founded this company with the aim of helping business gain benefit from the amazing opportunities Africa has to offer by ensuring efficient and streamlined operations across various industries.
Elizabeth aims to help companies achieve competitive advantage so that they are able to unleash their true potential. By focusing on strategy and optimization of operational efficiency, she strengthens the way businesses perform. With smoother business processes, efficient systems, and effective tools, Elizabeth ensures that the businesses become much more resilient, profitable, and scalable than they currently are.
Having worked with various development organizations, Microfinance institutions, government and social companies, mobile app developments, supply chain, and more, Elizabeth brings professional experience to the company. She has over 13 years of experience transforming tech, finance, logistics businesses and NGOs. She is currently coaching businesses remotely to streamline operations and respond to heightened uncertainty.
Her previous roles include Senior Manager at SeeSaw, an ICT start-up in Cape Town and Country Representative at Water.org in Ethiopia. She holds Six Sigma Black Belt and Business Process Management Certifications from the Business Process Management Institute, USA.
An adventurous and kind soul, Elizabeth has what it takes to transform your business for the better. She listens to you intently, understand your goals compassionately, and then help you achieve them unconditionally. She treats your business as her own and work as a part of your team so that you achieve that competitive advantage you always desired.
When it comes to achieving her dreams, Elizabeth has no limitations or boundaries. She goes wherever her passion takes her. So, no matter the complexity or structure of your business, Elizabeth makes sure that you execute the best levels of performance, irrespective of the resources available to you. Depending on project, Elizabeth is supported by a pool of qualified associates.
Elizabeth is a wanderer and loves to travel. Meeting new people, exploring new lands, and learning something new about the world every day empowers her to achieve her dreams and follow her passions with enhanced dedication.
Andrew Parris
PHD MIT, Lean Six Sigma Master Black Belt
Andrew Parris is Process Excellence Manager at Medair, a Swiss-based, international humanitarian organisation inspired by Christian faith to relieve human suffering in some of the world’s most remote and devastated places. Prior to joining Medair four and a half years ago, he worked for World Vision for nearly nine years – three of those living in Nairobi, Kenya and bringing Lean and Six Sigma to World Vision offices in the East Africa region. Before that he worked for eleven years at Lockheed Martin, mostly on the Atlas rocket program as a process improvement facilitator. He holds a bachelor’s degree from UC Berkeley in Manufacturing Engineering and worked as a Manufacturing Engineering in Silicon Valley for two years, after which he earned a master’s and PhD at MIT. He did his PhD research at MIT as part of the Lean Aircraft Initiative, which was tasked with finding out if Lean applied outside of the automobile industry, to the design and manufacture of aircraft.
Andrew has developed and given Lean and Lean Six Sigma White Belt (one-day) and Green Belt (one-week) training to over a thousand people in NGOs and developing countries. He is a global leading thinker and practitioner in bringing Lean Six Sigma to NGOs and developing countries.
He has spoken and written several articles about his work, including his most recent one published in May in the ASQ Lean Six Sigma Review.
Our Success Stories
Our aim is to help companies of all sizes so that they are able to achieve excellence in their operations and processes. However, our main focus is to help small and medium organizations with limited resources. We strive to help them unleash their maximum potential, deliver exceptional services, and achieve performance excellence with the resources available to them and not adding to their costs.
Over the many years we have been working, we have been able to help multiple companies. Here are a couple of our success stories, which we are very proud of:
We teach companies how to deliver high quality services with fewer resources. When a WASH project in Kenya was running behind schedule with more than 70% of sites requiring rework, we created improved processes, trained a team of 12 staff to identify the root cause of the defects. The team went to deliver high quality products on time and within budget, enabling a cost saving of more than $.5m over two years.
We hate to see companies fail for things they can prevent. When a mid-size MFI in Uganda was introducing a new product, we worked with management and staff to rationalize and simplify their credit manual and reporting. By implementing a value centered reporting system and process improvements, the MFI surpassed its annual loan targets by 100% while maintaining a PAR of less than 2% and a repayment rate of more than 98%.