Speaker | Author | Consultant | Corporate Culture Transformation Expert | Co-Founder & Managing Director at Excellent Cultures, Inc. | Nearly 5 Decades Building the World’s Best Cultures for the World’s Best Companies
Steve Gandara is a seasoned professional coach and consultant. He holds a BBA from the University of Oklahoma and completed postgraduate studies in management and leadership from Texas Christian and General Motors Universities. A former US Army Reserve Officer, Steve and his team at Excellent Cultures leverage a unique blend of scientific assessment data, extensive experience, and proprietary technology to design strategies that deliver impressive triple to quadruple digit client ROIs. Their unique “Service-Over-Self Organizational DNA” approach fosters cultures of relentless commitment to excellence, earning accolades for industry dominance, top performance, best places to work, and workplace diversity.
Steve’s clients range from individual executives and leaders, entrepreneurs and family businesses to global giants like Toyota, Costco, Caterpillar, Subway and Microsoft. Excellent Cultures IGNITE YOUNG LEADERS program equips and empowers next-generation corporate leaders at the high school, college and MBA level.
In addition to his consulting work, Steve has taught college courses in entrepreneurial leadership and speaks to corporate and business leaders about high-performance leadership, building excellent cultures and fostering cultures of unity that celebrate diversity. He conducts frequent Achieving Excellent Culture Workshops both live and virtually, reaching CEOs, Business Owners, Organizational Leaders at every level as well as next generation student leaders. The Excellent Cultures IGNITE YOUNG LEADERS program is recognized for developing future leaders and is licensed as university MBA curricula.
On a personal note, Steve has been married to Denise for five decades and is a father to eleven children (two biological and nine adopted) and has thirteen grandchildren. He leads a busy life, balancing family and professional commitments. Steve has also served in volunteer positions as a high school youth mentor, school board member, licensed foster parent, minority scholarship fundraiser, church board president, social service charity board chair, and college board of regents’ chairman.
“Principles and practices that change your organization for the better. They are truly timeless as I’ve seen them work for over 25 years now.”
David Jaworski, Principal Program Manager, Microsoft Teams, former President of Microsoft University
“Our high 95 percent engagement scores on the Toyota Survey (including hourly workers) are a result of the hard work of our team along with great programs like Excellent Cultures.”
George Christoff, President, Toyota de Puerto Rico
