Our Creative Energy Team

About Our Founders

Sylvia Lafair, Ph.D. and Herb Kaufman have a shared vision for creating extraordinary leaders in the 21st Century; authentic leaders who dare to do it differently, leading from a place of honesty, integrity, and creativity. They believe there is a new and better way for leaders to gain strategic advantage and improve their bottom line by learning to observe, understand, and transform behavior patterns that get in the way of success. Their work is recognized by LEADERSHIP EXCELLENCE as a TOP 2011 LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT COMPANY.

Sylvia Lafair, PhD, President of CEO 

With a doctorate in clinical psychology, Sylvia has taught at Hahnemann University and has more than 30 years’ experience applying her expertise in human behavior and relationships to organizational environments. She is a highly regarded executive coach and leadership educator, having worked with all levels of organizational leadership with major global corporations, family firms, entrepreneurs, start-ups, and non-profit organizations. Her book “Don’t Bring It to Work” had won numerous awards including being a TOP 20 BOOK FOR EMERGING LEADERS. Her new book GUTSY: How Women Leaders Make Change will be launched this spring.

Herb Kaufman, Chief Executive Officer of CEO 

Herb brings to the company more than 30 years’ experience as a corporate executive and experiential leadership educator. Herb has the ability to combine bottom-line thinking with attention to organizational health and well-being. He has developed and conducted adventure-based leadership challenge workshops and innovative executive programs. He is the lead developer and facilitator of our flagship program, “Total Leadership Connections” .

 
CEO’S Team of Professionals

 Mary Jane Saras, LCSW, Vice President, Leadership Development for CEO 

Mary Jane is an experienced educator, executive coach, and facilitator, specializing in leadership, team building, and optimizing workplace relationships. Her goal is to help organizations grow in creativity and collaboration. She is a graduate of Clemson University and has a master’s degree in social work from Marywood University. She was also given the honor of receiving The Athena Award for outstanding work in her community.

Rebecca Mattei, Executive Coordinator

Rebecca is your first point of contact and her pleasant and warm personality offers a true authentic welcome to CEO. As a graduate of The Pennsylvania State University with a B.S. in Business with an emphasis on Marketing and Management, Rebecca brings a wealth of knowledge to this position to assist in the visibility and promotion of CEO and The Country Place Retreat.

Executive Consultants and Senior Consultants

CEO’s consulting faculty consists of talented, caring, highly experienced individuals with backgrounds in a broad spectrum of disciplines, including health care, psychology, education, entertainment, communications, and human resources. With organizational experience ranging from global corporations to not-for-profit companies and entrepreneurial concerns, this multinational team has one very important thing in common: a belief in CEO’s philosophy, mission, and approach. In fact, many of our faculty members were inspired to work with us after experiencing the power of our programs first hand.

Baron J. Ginnetti, MBA, Executive Consultant

Baron is a founding partner of The GMR Group, a strategic managed care marketing consultancy, was involved in pre-launch/launch planning of a number of products, segment analysis, business planning, and a variety of educational initiatives, was the President and CEO for the organization for ten years. He has an extensive background in the pharmaceutical industry working for McNeil Pharmaceutical, a Johnson & Johnson Company. He presents at industry conferences and workshops, moderates advisory boards and focus panels with healthcare executives, and teaches in Saint Joseph’s University Executive MBA Program. He received a BS degree from Penn State University and an MBA in Pharmaceutical Marketing from Saint Joseph’s University.

Nancy Pennebaker, M.A., Executive Consultant

specializes in providing coaching and workshops for effective leadership and communication. She is an expert on non-profit organizational issues, having served as a senior director of a large 501c3 for 18 years. Nancy has a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology and a Master of Science in Journalism. She is a graduate of Stanford University’s Institute for Executive Leadership and a valued facilitator for both TLC and GUTSY.

John Rooney B.A., Executive Consultant

John has spent nearly 4 decades in the Global Food & Beverage Industry performing senior executive, leadership assignments with consumer product manufacturers and food distribution companies. John specializes in all functional areas of general management, operations, leadership development, organizational change, team and senior level relationship building. He has extensive Board of Director experience with all size business entities and cultural diversification composition encompassing the North American Continent, Europe, South/Central America and the Asia-Pacific Region. He is a graduate of Princeton University with a BA Degree in Sociology/Psychology.

Catherine K. Afeku, Senior Consultant to Ghana

Catherine resides in the town of Kumasi, in the Ashanti district, Ghana. She brings more than 15 years of high-level office management, sales and financial experience in an international environment. Catherine has strong ability to instruct and facilitate programs and her organizational planning and public speaking skills can be seen in her monthly television program about business issues and economic development in Africa. She is now a Member of Parliament in Ghana.

Joclyn Bines Goss, Senior Consultant

Joclyn has dedicated the past 15-years in counseling, social work, and team-training to making a difference in people’s lives, from juvenile offenders to the staffs, volunteers, and clients of not-for-profit organizations. An experienced human resources manager, social worker, and academic administrator, she describes herself as a “compassionate, straightforward motivator” who uses skills honed in counseling and social work to introduce change, achieve consensus, and build team support.

Kathy Bozinski, Senior Consultant

Kathy Bozinski is an Emmy-award winning journalist, with significant professional experience in television and radio news, on-camera coaching and presentation for corporate and commercial productions, digital journalism, media and public relations, social networking, and communications education. She is a member of the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA) New York Chapter. Kathy is currently based in New York City, and Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania.

Bill Drexler, MBA, Executive Consultant

Bill brings more than 25 years of Operations Management experience to CEO. He has worked with large and small companies in manufacturing, service, software, and government. Bill came to CEO with the realization that improving operations starts with improving how people work together. His skill in process improvement, assessing gaps in service, and developing effective solutions is an asset to any organization. Bill is a graduate of Juniata College and the Erivan K. Haub School of Business at St. Joseph’s University, Philadelphia.

 Dianne Moore, M.A., Senior Consultant

Dianne has served as a Human Resource Manager for 3M division, Senior Development Consultant, Manager of Team Building Services and Director of Organization and Talent Development for Imation. She helps executives solve complex issues, provides executive coaching, builds high-performance teams, and leads cultural change initiatives and teaches others to do the same. She has been a “Total Leadership Connections” facilitator since the onset of the program, over eleven years ago.

Pamela Nice, Senior Consultant

Pamela is President of PSN Associates- A Performance Solutions Network. She brings over two decades of experience in leading and coaching teams with some of the world’s most highly recognized companies. Her focus is to assist businesses in attracting and retaining talent and customers. Pamela’s exposure to quality-driven, results oriented organizations and her understanding of the “big picture”, combined with her passion for impacting employee performance and leadership productivity leads to an engaging, inspiring, learning experience that is sustained through time.

Nadia Ratycz, Senior Consultant

Nadia is the owner and founder of NIRA Strategic Solutions LLC, an emerging strategic advisory and project management firm specializing in mission critical project implementations for the power (renewable energy and solar), biopharmaceutical, healthcare, technical, real estate and development industries. She has over 25 years of project, energy, construction, and development experience from Fortune 500 companies, completing projects valued over a billion dollars. She also instructs NABCEP certification programs at local colleges. A certified Yoga Master, she combines her skills as an engineer with her other talents to address the role of women in leadership as a GUTSY as well as TLC facilitator.

Bob Roberts, Ph.D., Senior Consultant

Bob has more than 25 years’ experience in organizational change, management training, and strategic human resource management, with special expertise in building high-performance work teams. He has an undergraduate degree in Psychology and a Master’s in Organizational Behavior, and he earned a Ph.D. in Organization Development from Benedictine University. Dr. Roberts has instituted management development functions at several major companies including McDonald’s Corp., where he was Director of Management Development.

Jess Todtfeld, Communications Consultant

Jess is President of Results First-Training and Consulting, one of the leading authorities on business communications and media training in the U.S. He helps CEO’s, U.N. Officials, and spokespeople, to effectively communicate their messages to constituents with passion and purpose. He has an engaging style and is one of our sought after speakers for bringing the message of healthy workplace relationships to the business world. Jess has been on NBC, ABC, FOX, and Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show”, and hosts “America’s Premiere Experts.”

 Cynthia Tom, Senior Consultant

Cynthia has experience in pharmaceutical and healthcare technology sales, training, mentoring, marketing and strategic planning. She specializes in pharmacy, managed care, hospital systems, communications, and critical thinking. Her talents as a well-known artist led her to use these skills helping women access their creative energy. She has been interviewed on many radio programs about how she uses art to impact women in developing leadership capacities. She is a facilitator focusing on GUTSY and women in leadership.

Frank Walsh, Senior Consultant

Frank is an engineer and a leader who goal is to nurture the creative process. He is a senior executive whose direct reports have learned to ask questions and see connections between seemingly unrelated things. He believes everyone in an organization should consider themselves part of Research and Development. He helps leaders understand the foundations of human behavior so that they have the highest possible level of self-awareness and lead with empathy. He develops and delivers creativity seminars as well as facilitating TLC programs.