Leslie Yerkes | Biography

Leslie Yerkes earned her Masters of Science in Organizational Development at Case Western Reserve University after graduating from Wittenberg University with a Bachelor of Arts, cum laude, in Education. She founded Catalyst Consulting Group, inc. in 1987, designing the company’s services to utilize the best of her organizational development and teaching skills.

Leslie’s specialty is helping organizations turn challenges into opportunities.

Her philosophy is that people are basically good, well-intentioned, courageous, and able to learn. And her job is to provide a framework in which they can draw on their own, inner resources to find creative solutions.

In the corporate sector, Leslie often assists in managing change to increase productivity. As such, she was one of the lead trainers for Chrysler Corporation’s “Customer One” program, the largest retraining effort ever to have taken place in the United States.

Non-profit companies turn to Leslie for strategic planning, leadership coaching, team building and training. She was retained by Cuyahoga County Work in Training, which supports the Welfare to Work project. Her mission is to enhance the skills of the self-sufficiency coaches.

As an entrepreneur, Leslie enjoys working with smaller organizations, whether to launch a new company or product, re-direct an enterprise that’s gone off course, or help steer a company through the rough seas of rapid growth.

She writes frequently and is a contributor to newspapers and trade publications. She travels internationally as a lecturer and keynote speaker and has taught at John Carroll University, Baldwin Wallace University, and Kent State University. She serves on the faculty of the Weatherhead School of Executive Education and is a two-time recipient of the Weatherhead 100 Award.Yerkes is co-author of the best-selling 301 Ways to Have Fun at Work and is author of Fun Works: Creating Places Where People Love to Work; Beans: Four Principles for Running a Business in Good Times or Bad; They Just Don’t Get It!: Changing Resistance into Understanding; and Beyond Kicks & Carrots: Motivation in the 21st Century.

In those rare moments when she’s not working, Leslie loves to travel to foreign lands and once spent a year backpacking around the world. She’s lived in England and Australia and done special projects in Sweden and Ethiopia.

Our goal is to exceed your expectations. In the unlikely event you feel that the gains are not commensurate with the time and resources expended, we will continue the project at no further cost until you are completely satisfied. We offer this guarantee because we don’t want you to worry about our work when you have real issues with which to contend.

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