About Us

We partner with companies engaged in high-risk enterprises to improve performance, enhance culture, and mitigate risk by providing customized training and consulting services when nothing short of excellence will do.

What We Believe

Conger & Elsea is now NorthStar Performance Improvement, LLC – but we are continuing to do business in the marketplace as Conger & Elsea.  We value you as a client and for the services that you perform. We understand risk. We strive to assure our training and consulting services provide you tools and solutions so that your solutions are more effective, thorough, and realistic. We take the time to understand your needs; we do not believe that one size fits all solutions. We value your trust and pledge to serve you with integrity and excellence.

We work to assist you in resolving systemic risks in your company while enhancing the relationships across departments, and between leadership and individual contributors.

Integrity, client service, and excellence are not merely watchwords, but commitments to our clients and students. Across all points of engagement, we pledge to help you to improve performance, enhance culture, and mitigate risk.

Who We Are

Eugene Cobey

President and Chief Executive Officer

Gene has been the Principal Consultant for the company since 2015. Gene has a proven ability to successfully analyze an organization’s critical business requirements, identify deficiencies and potential opportunities, and develop innovative and cost-effective solutions to enhance client culture, improve performance, and mitigate risks associated with high-risk enterprises. In this capacity, Gene has supported numerous domestic and international clients realize their goals related to sustainable performance excellence.

Prior to joining the company, he was a senior leader in Tennessee Valley Authority’s Nuclear Power Group where he held key roles responsible for regulatory recovery of the company’s nuclear power plants. Previously, Gene served in a variety of leadership and executive roles for the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

Gene holds a Bachelor of Science degree from the U.S. Naval Academy and a Master of Arts degree from DePaul University. Gene is a certified member of the U.S. Senior Executive Service.

Connor Tropeano

Director of Business Development

As the Director of Business Development, Connor focuses on building and maintaining relationships with our clients.

Connor joined NorthStar Performance Improvement in 2023. He brings with him 7 plus years of business development experience and account management, serving customers across various high-risk industries. He will work with you to understand your specific needs and tailor our services to align with your goals and objectives.

Connor holds a Bachelor of Business degree from Saint Joseph’s University.

 

What Our Clients Say

“The comprehensive training provided by Conger & Elsea was excellent. The training provided a realistic scenario unique to our industry so that the attendees could apply the incident investigation and root cause techniques/tools taught in the course. In addition, the attendees were able to gain valuable experience practicing mock incident interviewing, collecting incident facts/timelines, and practice reporting out RCA findings to senior leadership. Since we hosted the initial training, the team has had the opportunity to apply what they learned to real life applications and have found it to be valuable training. I highly recommend the course.” – Frenae S., Manager Codes and Standards

 

“I recommend the Conger & Elsea RCA Training sessions to discover valuable event analysis tools and to gain a better understanding of Organizational Learning.” – Katie S., Safety & Health Specialist

 

“The course was well constructed and covered useful RCA and investigation techniques. I will be applying my newly learned MORT RCA techniques to future investigations that I conduct.” – Jessica A.D., Lead Incident Investigator

 

“Both instructors were knowledgeable, friendly, and helpful. The exercises were practical and effective; and, the class materials were easy to follow and thoroughly explained. While I do not want another incident to occur, if/when it does, I feel like I am better equipped to not only determine the Root Cause, but put in place effective corrective measures. I highly recommend this training.” – Jeremy W., Quality Manager

 

“Our station was placed into NRC Action Matrix Column 2 as a result of exceeding the white threshold for the NRC performance indicator for scrams per 7000 critical hours. To prepare for the NRC inspection, we had to revisit two previously completed root cause evaluations that had notable gaps to successfully complete a 95001 inspection, prepare a common cause for 3 reactor trips and along the way discovered significant gaps with the stations corrective action program (CAP) which in turn warranted another root cause investigation. Conger & Elsea was there from start to finish for us as this took approximately one year to navigate. Most NRC follow-up inspections are not quite this complicated. At the NRC debrief the inspection team noted that all root causes evaluations hit the mark and there was no root cause analysis rework to address. Given the technically complicated nature of our reactor trips, coupled with the CAP process gaps we had to address, this was quite impressive. We could not have done this without Conger & Elsea’s support.” – Roger W., Regulatory Affairs Manager

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