We have dedicated much of our professional lives to understanding the impact of human nature at work. Our mission is to use what we have learned to bring attention to a set of powerful, generative, yet less understood forces that are critical to accessing the full human potential and spirit at work.
With over 60 years of combined global experience with Teams & Emotional Intelligence, our goal is to build highly effective teams that are joyful and exciting, that attract the best talent, and are a competitive advantage for the organization as it moves into the Digital Age.
Naveed Khawaja
Co-founder, Chief Vision Officer & Coach
Dr. Steve Wolff
Co-founder, Chief Culture Officer
Richard Eppel
Co-Founders
Mr. Eppel has been a business leader in the hi-tech industry for over 35 years. Specializing in corporate turnarounds, he has brought his high energy, results-oriented approach, and powerful analytical, strategic and communications skills to bear on a wide range of organizations.
His consistent focus is on developing team-based, strategically oriented organizations capable of effectively responding to a rapidly changing marketplace. Prior to founding Strategic Momentum, Mr. Eppel enjoyed a distinguished career as an engineering executive in a Fortune 75 company and as a CEO of several high-technology companies.
Richard Eppel has been a business leader in the high-tech industry for over 35 years. Specializing in corporate turnarounds, he has brought his high energy, results-oriented approach and powerful analytical, strategic and communications skills to bear on a wide range of organizations. His consistent focus is on developing team-based, strategically-oriented organizations capable of effectively responding to a rapidly changing marketplace. Leveraging his experience as a turnaround CEO, Richard partners with CEOs and their teams to unlock the enterprise value obscured by organizational misalignment and dysfunctional conversations.
Richard works with clients in a variety of industries. His primary clients include technology, manufacturing and engineering services companies. Other types of clients include construction companies and health care organizations.
Richard helps clients dramatically improve their innovation and execution excellence throughout their organization. Richard takes a systems approach and focuses on aligning vision, strategy, operational processes and culture with an emphasis on aligning the culture to achieve the desired results.
Richard strongly believes that culture, how people think and act, is the key performance diver. Richard’s commitment is to achieve a 10X improvement in enterprise value within a 5 year period. Achieving this goal usually requires a significant shift in the mindset and actions of the team, which Richard accomplishes by changing their conversations. Ultimately, these shifts result in significant improvements in all the key processes driving value creation.
Richard received a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering at Stevens Institute of Technology. In addition to his consulting practice, Richard is a licensed M&A professional. Before becoming a turnaround CEO, Richard led a 550-person computer development division within a Fortune 75 company. Richard has taken advanced courses in organizational transformation and process re-engineering as well as pursuing continuing education through industry seminars, management, and leadership courses.
Richard has held board seats with privately held companies, the American Electronics Association, and the San Diego World Trade Center.
He cares about making a difference in the health and wellbeing of companies and their people and making a significant impact on organizational and individual performance, by improving how people cooperate, collaborate and coordinate action together.
Richard is committed to developing organizational cultures capable of producing extraordinary results. In the process of helping CEOs and their organization significantly increase their company value, he is also committed to growing the people so the organization does not outgrow them.
Mitch Simon
Co-Founders
Mitch’s expertise lies in the coaching and cultivation of high-performing leaders, teams, and companies.
His unique skills stem from 30 years of building a leadership curriculum, facilitating leadership and strategy retreats, and coaching executives and their teams to accelerate growth, build team alignment, and generate energetic and purposeful cultures. Mitch brings humor and creativity to his engagements through his work as a standup comedian and an improviser at the National Comedy Theatre in San Diego.
He leads the conversation around creating great leaders and teams from anywhere in the world as the host of the podcast, “Team Anywhere.”
Ram Srinivasan
Co-Founders
Ram Srinivasan has a very unique distinction of being the first person in North America (and the second person in the world) to hold the coveted Certified Scrum Trainer (CST From Scrum Alliance) and Professional Scrum Trainer (PST from scrum.org) certifications.
In addition to these, he is also a Certified Team Coach (CTC from Scrum Alliance) Certified Agile Leadership Educator (CAL-E from Scrum Alliance), LeSS (Large Scale Scrum) Friendly Scrum Trainer, and a Professional Coach, and Facilitator who specializes in coaching teams and organizations. His mission is to help his clients build great organizations and he does this by focusing on people, process, and product development.
Ram started as a developer and later moved to hold various roles including software architect, Project /Program Manager, and executive coach. He has coached, mentored and consulted from teams to organizations of all sizes across many industries (finance, insurance, retail, banking, media, telecom, etc.). This depth and breadth of experience give Ram the ability to view clients’ challenges from different perspectives and provide pragmatic solutions making him a sought-after Agile Coach.
Ram’s past engagements include organizations like 411.ca, AT & T,
Baker Hughes GE, Bank of America, Blue Cross Blue Shield, CGI, Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), CIBC, Cisco, Dow Jones & Company, IBM, Infosys, Lenovo, Oracle, Pension Benefits Guarantee Corporation, PGi, PNC Bank Rutgers University, Sapient, State of Texas, TELUS, T-Mobile, TJX, Tesco, University of Maryland-Baltimore County, Vistaprint, Veteran’s Affairs , Wall Street Journal, Walmart, and WorldBank.
Ram holds multiple certifications in Agile/Project Management (PMP, PMI-ACP, CSM, CSPO, CSP, PSM-I, II and III, PSPO-I, IC Agile Certified Professional). “Continuous Learning” is one of his personal values. He is currently pursuing a course on Leadership and Vertical Adult Development. A few of his other interests include emotional and social Intelligence in organizations, Applied neuroscience for organizational and culture change, Neuroscience based high-performance teams, Neuro-Leadership Development, Systems Thinking, complex adaptive systems, and understanding Human Systems in organizations.
Ram believes in giving back to the community. He has led the webinar team for PMI-Agile Community of Practice. He also frequently talks at local meet-ups, PMI chapters and conferences (Agile 201X, Agile India, Agile DC, Mile High Agile 201X, ADC conferences, PMI Symposiums and Professional Development Days, etc.) on various Agile and Lean topics.
Audrey Wyatt
Co-Founders
Audrey Wyatt has worked as both an Entrepreneur and an Intrapreneur including Corporate Controller at a startup software firm and Marketing Communications Manager at a Management Consulting firm both located in Dallas, Texas.
In a Learning and Development partnership with Simplified Coach based in Silicon Valley, Audrey traveled throughout the United States and facilitated over 100 workshops for a Fortune 100 Tech Company.
Audrey specializes in the facilitation and coaching of leaders and teams to enable perpetual co-creation in today’s volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (VUCA) world.
Audrey serves on the Advisory Board of Global Intrapreneurs Institute based in Brisbane, Australia.
Marcelle Bastianello
Co-Founders
An organizational psychologist, Marcelle is passionate about developing 21 st century leaders, while working with them building organizational capacity needed to be industry leaders, ensure employee growth and engagement, and impact their community. Marcelle’s work spans Fortune 100, growth companies and international non-profits. Her industry experience includes manufacturing, telecommunications, advertising, hospital, insurance and government.
Marcelle brings to her organizational work a unique blend of skills. Her multiple decades in IT, building corporate systems, makes her comfortable in highly technical environments while helping craft organizational solutions that deliver value. Her hands-on, general management experience in manufacturing ensures she stays focused on bottom-line revenue implications.
Her deep interest in emerging trends in business and science ecosystems means she is continually working with leadership, opening opportunities for innovation as their organizations adapt to an evermore complex world.
Marcelle’s research and work in organizations over the last 25 years has focused in two areas. The first is building effective organizations using a whole systems perspective. Marcelle realized early on it would be critical to understand the underlying, frequently unrecognized patterns present across the entire organization if leaders are to be successful. These patterns may have developed as the organization adapted to trends/events in the larger ecosystem. They are important because they impact not only the immediate capacity of the organization to be successful but may also impact its long-term sustainability.
Marcelle developed an interview process which allows the patterns to fully emerge. Analysis of the interviews allows us to come to understand the organization as a whole, an understanding that is critical in our volatile, complex world. The outcome of this process, part of the AgileEi Discovery process, is a set of themes with supporting narrative, ready for inclusive discussion, prioritization and planning with leadership.
Marcelle’s second area of research and work is specific to coaching leaders for success in a volatile world. We have learned much in the last several decades about leading organizations in this new era. Knowledge of leadership over the last century provided a solid foundation for leaders. That foundation is no longer sufficient as complexity accelerates and there is increased dependency on other, diverse organizations. Marcelle’s coaching is intended to work with leaders, helping them increase skills while integrating new principles in their leadership work.
David Miles
Co-Founders
David A. Miles, Ph.D. is a leadership author, experienced trainer, and professional speaker who is passionate about developing effective leaders at all levels. He is the Founder & Principal at Dr. Dave Leadership Corporation where he helps organizations create “AMAZING” teams with their proprietary “Insights Suite”.
Link to his Video
https://bit.ly/3A8x0yR
Dr. Dave holds a Doctor of Philosophy degree in Organizational Leadership with a concentration in Human Resource Development. His research compared the learning style of adult learners to their effectiveness as leaders.
He has conducted training and presented professionally across the United States at numerous different venues, events, and conferences. Dave has had the privilege of speaking by invitation on the topics of leadership and human resource development in both Oxford, UK on multiple occasions and in Singapore.
His clients range from hotel chains including Marriot and Wyndham Grand, major manufacturing firms, to non-profits and healthcare systems including Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. He has most recently presented at several statewide healthcare conferences and ran workshops for senior executive teams for a large regional non-profit organization – all by invitation.
Dr. Miles’ credentials also include being a Professional Member of the National Speakers Association (NSA), a Board member of the local NSA-DC chapter; a John Maxwell Certified Speaker, Coach, and Trainer; a Certified Stakeholder-Centered Executive Coach through Dr. Marshall Goldsmith, and certified in multiple behavioral assessment suites through TTI Success Insights.