Destra Consulting Group, LLC

A Selection of our Associates

Our global team of more than 40 Senior Associates have been executives in complex corporate environments and have worked with numerous organizations, internally and externally, to lead change and drive business results. Here is a selection of the talented Associates who work in conjunction with our Partners and our Clients:

Australia Based

Terry Brookshaw - Terry gained extensive knowledge and background in Six Sigma and Transactional Lean with a leading global company and trained in Atlanta, Georgia, USA. He gained experience in project design and implementation work while working in the USA over a 5-year period. With over 20 years of experience in quality improvement work, Terry is able to offer management coaching and mentoring at any phase of the Six Sigma implementation cycle. Also, between the formal training sessions involved in developing an organization's Champions, Black Belts, and Green Belts, Terry is available for on-site coaching and assistance in completing Six Sigma projects or to assist the organization's Project Champions in selecting, reviewing, and evaluating projects.

Aled Roberts, B.A., A.C.A., Senior Associate - Aled specializes in developing project team capabilities in Six Sigma, teamwork and change management and in translating process improvement into bottom line business results. Formerly Aled served as Manager for Customer Satisfaction and Business Process Improvement for a global minerals company and held senior management roles with Dana Corp. and Price Waterhouse, working in Europe, Canada and Australia. Aled now lives in Melbourne, Australia.

Mark Simmons - Mark brings 18+ years of experience working in public and private sector Australian organizations in training, team development and change management. As Training & Development Leader GE Capital-Australia & New Zealand, he delivered the Change and Facilitation components of the GE Six Sigma curriculum. He has most recently been assisting General Motors/Holden and Sun Microsystems Asia with their accelerated change efforts. Mark lives in Melbourne, Australia.

Harry Sinko, B.Comm., Senior Associate - Harry holds a Bachelor Degree in Commerce (Wollongong University), and a Mechanical Engineering diploma (Technical and Advanced Further Education College in Wollongong). Harry has over 24 years experience in the Steel, Resources and Transport industries. Harry has extensive experience in challenging Operations management roles in addition to Project Management, Engineering and Change Management. Harry has played a major role in introducing a number of successful initiatives and reforms in these areas and spent a number of years in the Total Quality Management and Six Sigma arenas. Harry has lead a number of successful business improvement projects both in Australia and abroad. Harry, his wife and four sons live in bayside Melbourne, Australia.

USA Based

Pamela Dennis, Ph.D., U.S. Senior Associate - Pam was the Founder of Destra Consulting and has served as a lead consultant on major initiatives including; GE, General Motors and JP Morgan change initiatives. Pamela specializes in strategy, strategy implementation and executive alignment. Pamela approaches work by quickly developing credible relationships with senior management, based on understanding the business and organizational challenges of executive leadership.

Ron Gager, M.A., U.S. Senior Associate - Ron has a reputation for making the complex simple and learning a pleasure. He specializes in organizational strategy, change leadership and project management. He was instrumental in the design and launch of several corporate-wide initiatives including GE’s WorkOut™ and Change Acceleration, General Motors GoFast!, Columbia Energy’s transformation and leadership alignment work and Xerox’s Baldrige winning quality initiatives.

Meg Hartzler, M.A., U.S. Senior Associate - A former U.S. Destra partner who now participates in special projects of interest, Meg has extensive background in the GE's WorkOut™ and ACT!FSL™ methodologies as well as developing internal training capability to support Improvement Teams. Meg was the lead consultant to two major corporate-wide initiatives for process improvement in both manufacturing and service industries and was extensively engaged in deploying WorkOut™ and Change Management for GE Plastics, the U.S. Customs Office and Columbia Energy Co.

Kathryn Kaczmarski, Ph.D., U.S. Senior Associate - Kathryn specializes in the field of leadership and organizational transformation. While in human resources at GE Company, she designed and facilitated extensive managerial training for leaders at all levels. She was the internal consultant responsible for implementing the WorkOut™ Initiative across 20 GE Capital businesses. A chemical engineer by background, Kathryn’s prior work experience includes numerous years in research and sales and marketing. She has worked with Merrill Lynch, Summit Bank, Unilever, Cable & Wireless (US and UK), Columbia Energy, Diageo (UK - parent company of Burger King and Pillsbury), the San Diego Union Tribune and Telstra Corporation Limited (Australia).

Elizabeth Keim, B.S., M.B.A., U.S. Senior Associate - Liz is a recent President of the American Society for Quality (ASQ). Liz provides strategy consulting and Black Belt training for Six Sigma for companies including: Telstra, Toshiba, American Express, DuPont and Ford. She has over eighteen years of technical, quality and management experience in service/transaction processes. She was a Master Black Belt at GE Plastics, where her focus was on transaction quality worldwide. Liz also held numerous management positions in IBM Global Services where she also was responsible for implementing the Baldrige framework.

Colleen Kindler, M.B.A., U.S. Senior Associate - Colleen is a “Best of the Best” Six Sigma Trainer to BHP and GE Capital. Formerly with Mercer Management Consulting, she managed Baldrige-based quality improvement initiatives and facilitated teams to redesign business processes for clients including GE Nuclear, General Motors and IBM. She assisted AT&T Network Services in optimizing the effectiveness of their business processes in an effort that lead to a Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award. Colleen co-developed the Black Belt DMAIC curriculum for GE Capital and was Destra’s deployment coordinator and faculty on the entire suite of offerings for BHP Billiton’s Six Sigma corporate-wide initiative.

Francisco Melero, M.A., U.S. Senior Associate - Francisco brings over 15 years experience in program management, change management, organizational leadership and strategic direction from his work in numerous international organizations. As a consultant in the areas of quality and management, his areas of expertise include Six Sigma, ISO 9000, Total Quality Management (TQM), Software Quality Assurance (SQA), Project Management and Change Acceleration. Francisco’s career includes experiences with large organizations as well as governmental departments and non-profit agencies. He spent ten years at International Business Machines (IBM) where he contributed to the quality of the company’s software products and the organization’s certification to the ISO 9001 standards. He was one of the lead consultants on the BHP-Billiton and Breed Automotive engagements where he led Change Management and Six Sigma courses worldwide. Francisco is a native of Venezuela and is fluent in Spanish.

Stephen P. Milden, U.S. Senior Associate - Stephen is an internationally known consultant and trainer in the field of organizational effectiveness and change management. As a consultant, coach, trainer and facilitator Stephen has worked with a number of Fortune 100 and 500 companies in the United States, Europe, Asia, the Mid-east and Australia. A partial list includes Anderson Consulting, Coopers and Lybrand, Office of the Governor U.S. Virgin Islands, United Airlines, G.E. Capital, Pacific Bell and Sun Microsystems. Stephen brings a wealth of experience to his work at Destra. He has been the CEO of an airline and the Managing Partner of a large multi-national real estate investment trust as well as faculty at Harvard Law School’s post graduate program on mediation and conflict resolution. His business acumen is complemented by his clinical training as a psychologist, which allows Stephen to focus on bottom line results while appreciating the dignity of each individual and the challenges they face within the organizations they serve. His specialities include custom-designed interventions focusing on senior team alignment, strategy and deployment, organization effectiveness assessment and developing internal capability to lead change.

John J. O’Neill, U.S. Senior Associate - brings a solid foundation in quality from his experience in the US Navy’s nuclear propulsion program and in the nuclear engineering department of Florida Power & Light including the successful award of FPL’s Deming Prize Challenge. Since 1991, John has provided improvement consulting to a variety of industries, including healthcare, manufacturing, utilities and financial services, training hundreds of staff in statistical methods and their application to business problems including supported General Electric, one of the most successful companies engaged in the pursuit of Six Sigma quality levels. At GE he co-developed their Design for Six Sigma methodology focused on delivering high-quality products and services for GE Capital Services. He is currently assisting Telstra and Johnson & Johnson in their pursuit of Design Excellence with the goal of improving their speed to profitability.