Team Members

With nearly fifty years of experience shaping high-performance leaders, teams and organizations Steve Gandara has made quite an impact. As Co-Founder and Managing Director of Excellent Cultures, Inc., he and his team of professionals have partnered with global brands—including Toyota, Microsoft, Costco, Caterpillar, and Subway—to help build workplace cultures recognized for unity, excellence, and industry dominance.

Cheri Benson's business coaching credentials: Certified Professional Coach with three decades of experience in mentoring, coaching, team building and personal development. She has a long history of helping leaders discover and break through limiting beliefs and structures.

Dale Hintz - Certified Management Consultant (CMC), helps clients identify goals and map clear paths to their “next level.” The mark CMC® is awarded by the Institute of Management Consultants to independent consultants meeting global ISO/IEC requirements and upholding strict ethical standards. 2% in the profession achieve CMC® certification.

Pete Wilkinson - Pete is a coach, mentor and high-performance talent architect. For over four decades, he’s mentored and trained talented athletes, their coaches, teams and their families in the achievement of sustainable peak performance, success and life balance.

Israel Gandara serves Excellent Cultures Clients as IGNITE YOUNG LEADERS Program Director and Social Media Manager.  Israel is dedicated to reshaping Gen Z's culture to excellence. With a background in both service and sales industries where he set records in both sales success and speed in being promoted to management. He’s very passionate about empowering today’s young minds.  He specializes in instilling the values of Excellence, Unity, Alignment, and Service-Over-Self in today’s next generation of future leaders.

David Kobelin is a Certified Professional Coach, international speaker, and trainer. He has spent over 35 years successfully encouraging, equipping, and empowering leaders and their teams. Providing clarity and clear step by step goals, David enables his clients to meet and exceed their desired performance results.

Shae Bynes is a trusted business strategist and advisor known for helping entrepreneurs and executives transform their personal and organizational culture since 2012. A prolific author, her most popular book Grace Over Grind: How Grace Will Take Your Business Where Grinding Can’t has inspired thousands of leaders globally to abandon the relentless pressures of “grind culture” and embrace a more excellent, sustainable, and impactful way of life and work.

Clint Hatton is a renowned author, speaker, and transformational leadership coach. Founder of Big Bold Brave, Clint's impactful journey has trained and empowered over 8000 leaders, touching a diverse range of clients. From non-profit organizations to Fortune 150 companies, like Starbucks Coffee and Westinghouse Electric, his dedication to fostering positive change and leadership excellence has left an indelible mark.

Dr. Rocky Tannehill is an entrepreneur, proven CEO, leadership-business developer, vision caster, communicator, mentor, and coach. He has a strong background in leading small, middle and larger business as well as corporate leadership and ministry. Rocky’s served in various corporate executive positions, on staff at large churches, taught in Christian Colleges, planted and grown both churches, youth movements, businesses, real estate development and private investment companies. He is a true believer in Excellent Cultures, having utilized the process for more than 30 years both personally and professionally in his various leadership roles as well as his family.

Ed Silva is a business consulting leader helping companies improve their operational and organizational effectiveness for over 30 years. He has worked with clients of all sizes from fortune 200 companies, family run businesses and start-ups. His industry experience is extensive working with Insurance, Health and Life Science, Oil and Gas, Utilities, Financial Services, Mining, Transportation, Automotive and Non-Profits.

Jennifer Howell, leadership consultant, speaker and executive coach, is dedicated to empowering executives and teams with skills and strategies to elevate performance, achieve goals, and strengthen emotional intelligence. Drawing on more than 25 years of hands-on experience with early stage startups, high growth companies, and Fortune 100 organizations such as Accenture, State Street Corporation, Bank of America, the American Heart Association, and The Salvation Army, Jennifer blends proven business strategies with deep, real-world expertise to drive transformative outcomes.

Heather Sword provides administrative support and project management for Excellent Cultures. She is one of our clients’ first points of contact and manages all the logistics of setting up and administering Excellent Cultures’ projects including all online diagnostic questionnaires and surveys.

Chris Peppler is a certified professional leadership coach with more than two decades of experience working with individual leaders as well as leadership teams. Chris is exceptionally gifted in guiding leaders to discover their truest identity, and purpose.

Jeff Arthur is the founder and creator of The Values Conversation, an assessment and conversation that facilitates values-based growth and development that helps people gain personal congruency as they learn more about what they value and who they are from those values on a personal, business and relationship level. Jeff has worked with executives, owners, and leaders from small businesses to Fortune 100 companies and served in support from personnel hiring, team development, leadership training and strategic planning.

Dr. Tony Pizelo has been an executive in the financial industry for over 25 years. He is currently Associate Professor in the College of Business at Northwest University. Dr. Pizelo holds a Bachelors of Arts (BA) degree in Economics with honors from Gonzaga University, a Masters of Arts (MA) degree in Economics from Washington State University, and a MA and PhD in Industrial Organizational Psychology from Seattle Pacific University. His dissertation in Industrial Organizational Psychology involved research in sales, leadership, sales performance development and theory of mind.

Mike Rochelle and the Excellent Cultures Team have spent FOUR DECADES PRODUCING THE WORLD’S BEST CULTURES FOR THE WORLD’S BEST COMPANIES DELIVERING TRIPLE to QUADRUPLE digit ROI’s. Throughout his career as leadership development strategist and program director/facilitator he’s served inside and outside both startups and midsized firms as well as enterprise level companies: Microsoft, DirecTV, Pearson Education, Jacobs Engineering, Time Warner Cable and State Farm. His clients include Corporate Level CEO’s, CTO’s, CMO’s and CFO’s as well as Entrepreneurs. Clients praise his ability to solve long standing, seemingly irreversible problems as well as compassionate, insight producing interviews and actionable group facilitation.

Charles Herrick Throughout more than 25 years in management and exec positions, Charles has displayed a unique ability to transform any operation he has run. From a successful career at IBM through to starting and running his own IT integration firm, he has consistently built powerful teams of dedicated employees and managers and then taken them to new heights of business success and employee morale.

Randall Benson – is a Lean Master and the founding principal of Benson Consulting, an Excellent Cultures Alliance Partner. Randall has spent over 20 years as a Lean business consultant helping businesses deploy highly effective Lean Process Initiatives resulting in multiple breakthroughs in efficiencies and phenomenal cost savings. For over 20 years, Randall has served his clients in applying Lean Principles (rooted in the Toyota Production System). Today he works primarily with manufacturing, service and healthcare organizations who wish to apply Lean Principles to improve the performance of their organizations.

Charles R. Oglesby - Recently retired from his position as Executive Chairman of the Board of Asbury Automotive Group Inc. Asbury is a Fortune 500 Retail Automotive Consolidator. At the time of his retirement, Asbury was the 6th largest in the US owning and operating 81 Automobile Dealerships posting annual sales of $3.7 Billion.

Dennis E. Clements was an officer of Toyota Motor Sales, USA. He served as Group Vice President and General Manager of the highly acclaimed Lexus USA Division from 2000 to 2005, where he led the process of building the automotive culture that set the bar for the industry. He was previously President of Toyota's Central Atlantic division from June 1991 to June 2000, and held a number of other senior management positions at Toyota.