Meet Our Consultants

Rick has consulted to boards of directors, executives, and senior teams enabling their businesses to become high performing organizations with the redesign of their strategies, structures, processes, reward systems, and people practices.   With years of experience consulting as the leader for Organizational Development in companies like Fidelity Investments, Devonshire Investors, Cisco Systems, and Boston Scientific and now as the president of Executive Consulting and Coaching, Rick brings a wealth of knowledge of multiple industries. As well he has worked around the globe as a consultant helping large and small companies transform themselves.   From assisting small bio pharmaceutical companies evolve from pure research to commercialization to facilitating large scale organizational changes for renown healthcare companies in Europe and Asia, Rick has demonstrated a breadth of knowledge and skill that can be applied to a wide range of businesses.

Rick is also a seasoned and certified ICF executive coach who has been partnering with leaders over his entire career to help them achieve superior business results and to develop their individual and organizational capabilities. Rick has a rich history of serving as an internal executive coach within companies and developing colleagues as executive coaches to enable a robust development culture. Through his company, Executive Consulting and Coaching, he expanded his strategic impact by working with senior leaders in startups and Fortune 500 companies and coaching leaders from around the world at Harvard’s Executive Education Programs.   Leveraging his global experience and perspective he has created and sustained successful engagements in APAC, EMEA, LATAM and across the US and Canada.

What differentiates Rick as a coach is his focus on business impact. Coming from companies where he was responsible for the accelerated development and succession planning for top talent, he has evolved a rigorous approach to his coaching methodology – one that enables leaders to truly transform their capabilities and performance through the course of an engagement. His approach is pragmatic and focused as much as possible on experiential strategies to develop the leadership skills and knowledge of his coachees.

Rick graduated from Brown University with a BA and MA in English. He complemented these degrees with a MBA from Babson College specializing in Human Resources and Organizational Behavior.

Dave Yakonich is a talent development leader with proven expertise in virtual training, blended learning, and program design and development. His specialty is helping companies achieve success through the design, development, and delivery of interactive blended learning programs and courses.

Dave’s success is due to his ability to collaborate with business leader to co-create engaging learning programs and experiences that deliver optimal busines results. What sets Dave apart from other talent development professionals is his ability to envision the possibilities and creatively apply technology to development solutions.

Dave’s consulting capabilities include:

• Learning Strategy: Shifting a corporate learning mindset from in-person to a blended delivery model takes time. Dave partners with clients to understand the strengths and weaknesses of their bench and curriculum and builds the recommendations for taking their learning strategy to the next level.
• Development Coaching with expertise in Virtual Learning: Need to build internal expertise in virtual design, facilitation, or producing virtual learning? Dave provides one-on-one and small group coaching on these skills through interactive workshops to build virtual design and delivery capabilities.
• Blended Design and Development: Have a learning curriculum that needs to be converted to a blended or virtual delivery? Dave provides instructional design expertise to make the conversion into an engaging blended experience.

Dave has a Bachelor’s Degree in Business Marketing and Master’s Degree in Human Resources and Organizational Development. He lives in Las Vegas, Nevada with his wife and five kids.

Lauren is known for her no nonsense, efficient, and purposeful approach to coaching. Her
experiences have taught her that clients perceive coaching to be effective when they can truly
see where they have “moved the needle” and made measurable change. Her top priority is
maximizing the value and the time her clients invest in their coaching experience.

Lauren’s consulting and executive leadership positions have provided her with many
opportunities to lead teams through large scale transformations such as system
implementations, sales incentive design and HR and total rewards redesign efforts. She
personally and professionally develops individual leaders and team members and serves as a
personal mentor to those that surround her.

Lauren has a Bachelor's Degree in Business Administration from Miami University and a
Master's in Counseling from Indiana University. She has completed executive education
programs at the University of California, Berkeley, and Cornell University, and is a certified
executive coach (ACC).

Michele has deep experience as a leader in enterprise learning. She is skilled in obtaining a clear understanding of client needs, objectives, and parameters leading to the design, development, and execution of measurable, high-quality learning experiences. Her creative approach to learning allows her to create a customized experience for each client, whether in person or virtual.

Michele’s specific areas of expertise as a Learning Solutions Consultant include:

• Onboarding
• Leadership Development
• Soft Skill Professional Development
• Process Improvement

Michele has a passion for broad collaboration to drive effectiveness, efficiency and cross functional and/or global alignment.

In partnership with stakeholders, business leaders, team members, and external vendors, she designs and delivers implementation elements including pre-communication, leader preparation, event execution/facilitation and sustain efforts that support learning, bring to life enterprise initiatives, drive key messaging and support change.

Michele received her Bachelor of Science degree at Iowa State University. Currently, Michele is the Founder and Principal Consultant at Next Consulting.  In addition, she is the chair and founder of the Twin Cities L&D Network and L&D Consulting Network in the Minneapolis/St. Paul area.

A strategic partner with 30 years of experience creating high-impact business and people outcomes in diverse industries as medical devices, financial services, and high tech. Whether it is blueprinting people processes, implementing HR technology platforms to streamlining operations or creating workforce plans to accelerate organizational growth and profitability – Shawn has the expertise to create strategic impact for organizations.

Shawn’s unique capabilities encompass:

• Workforce Strategy – Staging workforce plans to help companies determine who to hire, when to hire to accelerate your growth plan – from a startup to pre-IPO to a Fortune 500 company
• HR Technology Strategy and Implementation – Establishing a disciplined approach to evaluate HR technology solutions, including vendor selection, implementations strategy, process design and implementation.
• HR Process Design – Defining and implementing the processes to create company cultures and high performing functions & organizations – including Performance Management and Succession Planning.

HR Analytics and Decision Support – Creating dashboards to enable data-based decision making across companies and leadership teams.

Paul is a Leadership and Management consultant with 35 years of experience who has worked as a consultant and executive coach for organizations all over Europe and the United States.

Paul uses exceptional business and human resource expertise to transform clients’ businesses and help them reach their maximum potential.   His expertise includes mergers & acquisitions, organizational design, human resource assessment and strategic planning, executive coaching, competency modelling, and leadership assessment & development. Paul has held senior business/human resource positions with three major companies: Cisco Systems, Fidelity Investments, and Federated Macy’s.

Paul works with both global and domestic clients in: Technology, Financial Services, Products, Healthcare, Retail, and Services; he has also done work in the not for profit areas.

He has a proven track record for producing outstanding business results within competitive, fast paced business environments, while effectively balancing the needs of the business, customers and employees.

Paul was educated in the UK and has multiple certifications in assessments that accelerate the development of teams and executives.

Lorraine’s executive coaching and consulting styles embody “backbone and heart.” For 30 years, she has used a client-focused results-driven approach to partner with leaders and organizations to successfully achieve business objectives. She has designed and delivered award-winning strategic leadership development programs throughout the U.S., Europe and Asia. Lorraine has worked with thousands of professionals to enhance their leadership abilities and interpersonal skills that led to improved performance and greater organizational effectiveness.

She finds this work deeply satisfying and rewarding. Her mantra is “Improving the world one life, one organization at a time.” She has expertise in organizational development, executive coaching, leadership development, and team effectiveness.

Lorraine holds a Professional Certified Coach (PCC) accreditation through the International Coach Federation. She completed a one year post-graduate certificate program in Evidence Based Coaching from Fielding Graduate University in Santa Barbara, CA. Her Master’s degree in Organizational Management is also from Fielding. Prior to starting her own business, Lorraine held various leadership roles working for Boston Scientific Corporation, Amgen Inc., Home Savings of America and Farmers Insurance. Lorraine is a life-long learner and continues to evolve as she supports her clients’ progress towards a life of clarity and purpose.

Liz has over 30 years’ experience in Human Resources blending HR Business Partnering, Executive Consulting, and Executive Coaching to support leadership development and change interventions to achieve organization goals. As a senior talent management leader in organizations across Europe, Liz has led company initiatives in organizational development, strategic alignment, succession planning, change management, and high potential development.   Among her many achievements are the design and development of assessment centers using competency based frameworks, executive assessments, and simulations to evaluate and then develop successors for key leadership roles.

Liz has led HR functions in British Aerospace, Motorola Solutions and Boston Scientific in both country and regional roles.

Liz is also highly skilled executive coach with certifications in multiple assessments, including Hogan Personality Assessment, Hogan Judgment Assessment, Insights, and multi-rater instruments. Liz has a Bachelor of Science Degree in Business Management and a Post Graduate Degree in Human Resources. She is based in the UK and has worked extensively across all of Europe.