Professional Services Team

Trish oversees projects with high profile clients including SAP, Charles Schwab, Intuit, Yahoo!, Cisco Systems, Kodak, eBay, Citibank, Univision Communications, and Blue Shield of California. She also advises private-equity and venture-funded companies such as Ning, LiveFuels, Hydropoint Data Systems, Imara, and other companies funded by leading private equity and venture capital firms including NEA, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Battery Ventures, Nth Power, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, and Sequoia Capital. Trish has also lectured on business growth topics, such as business planning and positioning at the university level and for corporate training programs.

Prior to founding Catalyst Strategies, Trish was a consultant with Booz Allen & Hamilton’s New York Strategy Practice and a partner with Marketing Corporation of America, where she served a variety of Fortune 100 consumer-services clients. Trish has held VP-level line management positions, including those at Turner Broadcasting and at Themestream, one of the web’s first user-generated content sites, which was funded by Kleiner Perkins and Redpoint Ventures. Trish started her career in high technology sales with Control Data Corporation.

Trish holds a MBA from the Columbia University Graduate School of Business and a BS from the Pennsylvania State University.

Mary’s experience includes sales strategy, sales operations, and field marketing initiatives for Cisco, McAfee, eBay, Entercept Security Technology, diCarta, Vividence, and Sun Microsystems. She has expertise in the thermal management, security, CRM, ERP, web services and mobile markets.

Mary has a track record of building high performance sales teams, aggressively driving customer acquisition and revenue within a range of industries and company profiles. She has also successfully led numerous sales integration teams during significant mergers and acquisitions. Prior to consulting, she held senior manager and vice president positions at Symantec, Delrina Technology, CKS US Web, SCO (The Santa Cruz Operation), and Vividence, a Kleiner Perkins and Sequoia Capital portfolio company.

She holds a BA with Honors from UCSC.

Since 2006, Sarah’s clients have included Johnson & Johnson, Blue Shield of California, Microsoft, and Advanced Micro Devices as well as early stage companies in health care, technology and retail services.

Before joining Catalyst Strategies, Sarah was chief marketing officer of Posit Science, a life sciences company in brain health. Sarah built marketing and sales from scratch—leading a team to craft the brand, value proposition, business model, and offer strategy. Previously, Sarah was general manager of Small Business Services for Intuit. Her team delivered double-digit growth by identifying and launching two breakthrough services.

In her New York era, Sarah was senior vice president of Market Development for Standard & Poor's. She led global product management, marketing, research, and communications for six divisions. Prior to S&P, Sarah was vice president of New Business Development for Reader’s Digest Association where she launched the company’s digital media business and profitably expanded the customer base. Sarah started her career in brand management with Procter & Gamble and in consulting with McKinsey & Company.

Sarah holds an MBA from Cornell University as well as a BA with honors in History from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

A principal with Catalyst since 2002, Sandra has led projects for Schwab Retail Services, Intuit, eBay, and acted as a senior advisor for AAA. Before joining Catalyst Strategies, Sandra was a Director of Advised Offers for Charles Schwab. She had P&L responsibility and directed all aspects of the business including marketing strategy, pricing, sales and distribution, operations, and technology infrastructure. Under her leadership, the service was developed, launched and scaled up to almost $1 billion in assets during its first year. While at Schwab, Sandra also worked as an in-house consultant, successfully launching new retail businesses and improving the profitability of existing ones.

Prior to Schwab, Sandra spent three years as a project manager at the Boston Consulting Group where she successfully managed strategic projects in corporate strategy development, growth opportunity identification, market entry planning, acquisition due diligence, post-merger integration, and strategic planning process design. Sandra also brings world-class experience in new product and service development from her four years at Bell Canada.

She holds a MBA in Finance from the Wharton School of Business, a Masters of Applied Science in Management Information Systems from the University of Toronto and a Bachelor with Honors in Industrial Engineering also from the University of Toronto.

Prior to joining Catalyst Strategies, Michael was Managing Director of the Ackerman McQueen, the nation’s 10th largest independent advertising agency. His clients included LeapFrog Enterprises, Juniper Networks, Xirrus WiFi Systems, BancTec, Claimetrics Insurance, Mega Brands, and Hooked On Phonics. Among other successes, Michael can point to the fact that over its 11-year relationship with Ackerman McQueen, LeapFrog grew from a start-up to over $650 million in revenues, winning the Grand Effie for the most effective marketing campaign in 2004.

Before joining Ackerman McQueen, Michael was CMO for Jarden Corporation, a $4 billion diversified consumer products company. In addition to M&A initiatives, Michael led the successful restage and re-branding initiative of two major divisions. Earlier in his career, Michael advanced through the brand management ranks at Quaker Oats and was managing director for the launch of Gatorade in Australia and New Zealand, the most successful launch of Gatorade anywhere outside of the U.S. Michael started his career in advertising at Ogilvy & Mather in New York.

Michael holds an MBA from the Darden School at the University of Virginia and a BA in History from Dartmouth College.

Before joining Catalyst Strategies, Jill served as vice president of Marketing at Visto Corporation and directed member acquisition and product marketing at Netscape Communications and America Online. She has also been a consultant at Price Waterhouse, KPMG, and Braxton Associates.

Jill holds an MBA from The Anderson School at the University of California, Los Angeles and a BA in International Relations from Pomona College. She also studied business at the Ecole Supérieure de Commerce de Paris in Paris, France and international relations at the Institut Universitaire des Etudes Européennes in Geneva, Switzerland.

Jillian's expertise includes assisting clients in evaluating the feasibility of new concepts, assessing new market opportunities, conducting customer/market validation, performing market and competitive research, developing strategic, operational and business plans and financial modeling to quantify resource requirements, cash flow and earnings potential for new ventures. Special emphasis is on formulating growth strategies for emerging technology companies.

Representative clients include companies in the Internet, computer software and hardware, clean tech, telecommunications, health care, business services, manufacturing, retail, and consumer products industries.

Prior positions include management consultant for Coopers & Lybrand (now PriceWaterhouse Coopers) West Coast Retail Consulting Practice and research and portfolio analyst with investment banking firms Kidder Peabody (now UBS) and Cornerstone Investments in San Francisco, CA.

Jillian holds an MBA with honors in Finance and International Management from the Monterey Institute of International Studies and a BA from the University of Wisconsin, Madison in International Relations .

Before joining Catalyst Strategies, Martha’s work with Stone Yamashita Partners helped some of the world’s most recognized technology and CPG companies redefine their go-to-market strategies and organizational structure. In earlier work, she oversaw her clients’ product development processes, including build/buy and competitive evaluations, and helped technology firms build customer reference programs based on sophisticated case study cost-savings analyses.

Prior to consulting, Martha led the marketing, business development, and sales operations groups at two early stage software firms, where she was responsible for global marketing programs and distribution. Her teams were instrumental in stabilizing and increasing revenue leading to new investor funding and acquisition. She also spent 12 years in sales management at Xerox Corporation and Océ North America.

Martha received her BA in history from Dartmouth College and was jointly awarded MBA Degrees from Columbia University and UC Berkeley.

Prior to joining Catalyst, Kim spent eight years with Charles Schwab in a variety of strategic and operating roles. Her most recent role was vice president of business strategy, where she successfully partnered with various Schwab divisions to develop new business opportunities and growth strategies. Prior to this, she was vice president of Web trading, responsible for all aspects of online product development and client user experience for trading and equity news and research capabilities of www.schwab.com.

Prior to Schwab, Kim was a management consultant with Arthur D. Little, in Cambridge, MA and San Francisco, CA. She advised multinational technology and telecommunications clients on product and marketing strategies, with particular expertise in market entry strategy development for manufacturers entering the US consumer market. In addition, Kim worked with several telecommunications firms to evaluate, benchmark, and redesign new product development processes and build product portfolio management capabilities.

Kim has an MBA from Harvard Business School and a Bachelors degree in Economics and Philosophy from Boston College.

Prior to joining Catalyst Strategies, Isabelle was Vice President of Sales and Marketing for North and South America for DHL. She was responsible for directing the company’s marketing strategy, advertising, pricing, yield management, market research, and client acquisition and retention strategies. She also managed a significant overhaul of the DHL brand during its acquisition of Airborne in 2003. During her eight years with DHL, Isabelle worked in a wide variety of roles based in Europe and the US.

Isabelle also spent three years as an independent consultant in the investment banking industry. She consulted on a wide variety of projects with Credit Suisse Financial Products, Deloitte Consulting, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Sullivan & Cromwell, ING Barings, Daiwa Europe, and Saudi International. As a consultant with Catalyst her clients have included SAP, Blue Shield of California and Charles Schwab. In addition to services marketing, Isabelle has extensive experience in product and consumer goods marketing, having begun her career with Unilever in South Africa.

Isabelle has a Bachelors degree in Finance and Marketing, and a Postgraduate Degree in Management Accounting from the University of Natal, South Africa. She is also a Certified Management Accountant, with the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants in London.

Prior to joining Catalyst Strategies, Freny consulted for companies such as Palm, Inc., Apple Computer, Plantronics and KnightRidder, as well as numerous start-ups, helping them improve their demand generation programs, refine their advertising strategies and develop impactful web sites.

Freny has held senior marketing communications positions at Silicon Graphics and Claris, where she significantly increased awareness and initiated e-commerce efforts for their products.

She holds an MBA from the Marshall School at the University of Southern California and a BA from the Monterey Institute of International Studies.

Prior to consulting, Thomlyn spent more than 11 years working in marketing and eBusiness at Charles Schwab. Her responsibilities included acquisition of new clients, development of the mass market segment of clients and managing online goal and portfolio planning tools. As the Director of the Independent Investing Foundational Service, Thomlyn had P&L responsibility and directed all aspects of the business including marketing strategy, pricing, and offer management for all self-directed clients with less than $100k in assets—representing 1.6 million households and $470 million annual revenue. Thomlyn’s experience at Schwab also includes various roles in eBusiness where she managed online portfolio and goal planning tools.

Thomlyn holds a BA from Mills College.

Scott’s success in supporting business transformation with technology is based on his ability to adeptly translate business vision into IT plans. His technology experience includes web services and service-oriented architecture (SOA), enterprise resource planning (ERP), enterprise architecture (EA), and identity management (IdM) across leading server platforms, operating systems, and database environments. His structured approach leverages proven business process methodologies including Six Sigma, Project Management Institute (PMI) and PRINCE2.

Before joining Catalyst Strategies, Scott held senior management roles in professional services and technical marketing at Sun Microsystems. While leading the program management office (PMO), he led implementation of new business processes and best practices resulting in increased profitability of strategic account business. As a senior principal engagement manager, Scott had responsibility for defining IT project strategy for web services, consumer products, and high tech companies, including Juniper Networks, Apple Computer, Clorox, Ross Stores, Gap Inc., PG&E, and California ISO. Prior to Sun Microsystems, Scott held technical marketing management roles at Intel Corporation and Paradise Systems/Western Digital.

He holds a BSEE with Eta Kappa Nu Honors from University of Pacific and is a Six Sigma practitioner and ITIL Foundation certified.

Since 2006 Weston’s clients have included NetApp, Louis Vuitton, SAP, Blue Shield of California, Standard Insurance, and Timbuk2 as well as an advisory roles for early stage startups.

Before Catalyst Strategies, Weston held executive roles at USWeb/CKS, Publicis Hal Riney, and Zenith National Insurance where he lead organizations as a large as sixty persons and delivered multi-million dollar technology projects. He was also founding team of two successful startup companies where he built product strategy, technical organizations, technology infrastructure, and products from the ground up.

Weston’s career began with artificial intelligence research at Nationwide Insurance and software engineering for Silicon Graphics where he later delivered the European deployment of the first, global, digitally-networked voicemail system. Weston holds a degree in Computer Science Engineering from The Ohio State University and multiple certificates including Project Management from AMA.

Prior to Denning & Company, Paige was an investment analyst at GameChange Venture Capital, a seed-stage venture fund started by Mobius Ventures and Accenture Technology Ventures. Paige focused on identifying and evaluating business proposals, researching target markets, and working with the team on investment strategy and process. Prior to joining GameChange, Paige was an Investment Analyst in a joint venture between Johnson & Johnson Development Corporation and Hambrecht & Quist, the “HealthNet Ventures Fund”, where she worked directly with the two general partners on all fund affairs, from deal origination to competitive profiling to quarterly reporting.

Paige began her career in private equity in 1998 at Hambrecht & Quist.

She graduated with a B.A. in Human Biology from Brown University.

Bill has previous consulting experience on the Management Services staff of Touche, Ross and Co. [now Deloitte and Touche] where he performed engagements in industries as diverse as shipbuilding and retailing. He has executed financial and data analysis models for clients such as Johnson & Johnson, Charles Schwab, AAA, eBay, Salient Wealth Management, and Carl Zeiss Meditec.

Bill holds the degree of Master of Science in Industrial Administration from the Krannert School at Purdue University, and Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering with Tau Beta Pi honors from Purdue University. He is a Registered Professional Engineer in California.

Leroy has been on the faculty of the American University in the School of International Service and the World Capitals Program since 1983. As a Fulbright scholar he received his doctorate, magna cum laude, at the University of Bonn in international relations in 1980. He graduated Phi Beta Kappa with his B.A.