Dr. Pat applies expertise in organizational change, human behavior, group process, and meeting facilitation to help leaders achieve profitable growth and aligned performance. Pat facilitates strategic planning processes, team-based decision making sessions, distributor and customer advisory councils, and executive team sessions. Her techniques accelerate the leadership and management of change with both internal and external constituents.

Through three decades of leadership and consulting engagements, Pat has supported senior leaders to develop and achieve visions and strategies. Her powerful meeting management tool, The KaleideScape Process, converts diverse and conflicting input from teams and followers into patterned and logical thought processes. Functional and cross-functional stakeholders willingly participate in a brain-based learning and thinking process, then together identify what needs to be accomplished and how to proceed. Pat's expertise in establishing open and productive communications environment results in high levels of consensus, and even higher levels of commitment to strategic initiatives and change.

Pat has designed and facilitated strategic planning retreats, executive team building processes, implementation plans, and change management processes for a diverse group of industrial companies, service firms, and non-profit organizations. She has trained leaders and their teams in change leadership, organizational alignment, group process and team leadership, and meeting facilitation. For two decades, Pat headed her own consulting firm, Pat Schmakel & Associates and held senior executive roles at NFO Research, Inc., As Associate Professor of Leadership Studies at Lourdes College; she designed and taught graduate courses in organizational development, organizational behavior, interpersonal leadership, and leadership of diversity. She continues to serve as a research project advisor.

Pat earned her B.S. in Business from Miami University, and her M.B.A. then Ph.D. in Educational Psychology and Human Resources from The University of Toledo. She has also studied at Northwestern University and Bowling Green State University, and is certified in workplace mediation. Pat is a member of the Association of Management, the American Psychological Association, and the American Association of University Women.