Team Members

Steve Gandara 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. A Hispanic American, Steve grew up in a West Texas family of overachievers, graduated from the University of Oklahoma, served as a US Army Reserve Officer, and completed post graduate work in management and leadership at Texas Christian and General Motors Universities. He has served a wide range of leaders and firms from startups to Fortune 500s as both executive coach and leadership consultant. His clients include CEO’s and Corporate Execs, Entrepreneurs, Business Owners, Family Office CEO’s, Sales & Marketing Execs as well as Clergy and Nonprofit CEO’s. Clients praise his expertise in helping them discover hidden-below the surface insights and using them to devise and implement breakthrough strategies.

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.

Frances Strickland is a former Human Resources executive in the FMCG space. Her career spans more than 30 years as a leader in manufacturing and human resources in various industries, and across cultures from all four corners of the globe. She established V Chastain Global Enterprises LLC in 2013 and launched the Verolead™ consultancy in 2020 amid the pandemic when a new reality revealed the challenges of leaders to inspire and thrive in crises and beyond. Frances brings strengths in executive talent development and succession planning, change leadership, and performance culture from a human perspective, all with the view to enhance the quality of the work experience while enabling individuals to be the best version of themselves and realize their best contribution and potential wherever they may find themselves.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Mike Chirveno helps business leaders build the business they've always dreamed of. Mike has worked with startups, family businesses, publicly traded companies, government agencies, and not for profits. His industry experience has spanned hospitality, fresh produce, food production, consumer packaged goods, mortgages, publishing, automotive, construction, medical, professional services, engineering, and more.

Dr. Juliane Pelfrey has over 15 years of experience helping individuals achieve their professional potential and organizations reach their potential through talent optimization practices. While she has a breath of experience in working with companies of various sizes and industry such as construction, staffing, bottling, print, education and healthcare, her passion is helping large family owned organizations achieve their potential and legacy through planning for the future leadership of their company.

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.

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.

Coach Mike Connaway Excellent Cultures' Senior Partner was the original Executive Coach. He began his career in executive coaching in 1993 in partnership with legendary multiple National Championship winning college football coach Fred Akers. Since then Mike’s coached hundreds of leaders ranging from professional athletes to CEO’s of major corporations.

Denise Upah Mills is a self-described Serial Entrepreneur. She is cofounder and Chief Mindset Officer of LeaderFuelNow, LLC and is also a principal of Pacific Accord, Inc. 25 years of successful business ownership experience that spans a variety of industries including: real-estate; insurance; financial services; agriculture; healthcare and technology provide her with a wealth of real world business knowledge.

John Kaminski - John is passionate about guiding companies to the next level while emphasizing the importance of strong leadership and organizational culture. He is a coach and mentor working with business owners and C level executives across the nation.

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.

Kent Kingman has been a consultant of business transformation, performance enhancement and culture transition since 1989. He serves on the Board of Directors for two family held companies and runs a third as interim CEO. Kent is very unique among today's management support professionals. He has personally implemented the concepts of culture transition in various supervision and management roles within a multibillion dollar aerospace company as well as several privately held companies. His consulting experience is based on real-time experiences and not just theory.

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.