Welcome to the Greater Pittsburgh Area Trusted Advisor Group (TAG). Most business owners or executives belong to Vistage to learn from experiences of other business owners. This learning and advice extends naturally to your local Trusted Advisor Group. We are a formal group within Vistage that supplies members of Vistage a resource that can be trusted. All aspects of your business can be covered by TAG!
Please contact any of the members for a short consultation.
Caleb Zelanko is a Commercial Banking Relationship Manager for PNC Financial Services Group. He supports businesses with annual revenues ranging from $5 million to $100 million, with a focus in the manufacturing, professional services, and wholesale trade industries.
Caleb holds a Master of Arts in Economics and Education from Columbia University and a Bachelor of Arts in Economics from Allegheny College.
Caleb is active in a number of community organizations, and lives with his wife, daughter, and dog in Aspinwall.
With a degree in finance from the University of Pittsburgh, Clement has spent over seven years as a management consultant at PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) where he helped Fortune 1000 companies refine their risk management and back-office processes. At CRA, Clement performs accounting services, as well as consulting and technology transformation services. Clement is currently pursuing his master’s in accounting.
Laurie Barkman, The Business Transition Sherpa®, is the former CEO of a $100 million revenue company that was sold to a Fortune 50.
She is the founder of Business Transition Sherpa LLC a business transition advisory firm, and is a Partner with Stony Hill Advisors, a mergers and acquisitions firm providing intermediary services to companies in the lower middle market.
As a Business Transition and M&A Intermediary, Laurie advises owners how to create more valuable businesses and find the right buyer when it’s time to let go.
Her expertise in business transition, succession, entrepreneurship, value growth, and M&A has been spotlighted in various media like Newsweek, Forbes, Yahoo! Finance, WTAE/abc, Pittsburgh Post Gazette, and more. She is an adjunct professor of entrepreneurship at Carnegie Mellon University, and Amazon best-selling author of "The Business Transition Handbook: How to Avoid Succession Pitfalls and Create Valuable Exit Options." She hosts the award-winning Succession Stories Podcast, rated in the top 2.5% of shows globally.
Laurie serves as an Advisory Board Member for Massaro Corporation, a second generation construction company, and The Orchards, a second generation health services company.
Laurie earned her business degree from Cornell University, MBA from Carnegie Mellon, and received a professional designation from The Alliance of Mergers & Acquisitions Advisors.
She received the Vistage Top New Speaker Award in 2021 and is a Vistage Trusted Advisor Member based in Pittsburgh, PA.
Connect with Laurie for more information about exit value planning, transition advisory, valuations, and M&A transaction services.
With entrepreneurial spirit, Ken is the 2015 founder and president of Global Launch, a fractional marketing consulting firm. Trained as a chemical engineer from Cornell and with a Tepper/CMU MBA, he leverages global experience including international P&L responsibility, change-leadership skills and empathic listening to solve customer's strategic B2B marketing challenges, enabling their sustainable growth.
A caring coach, having dealt with the challenges of international cultures and divergent market requirements, he has the ability to balance hard-driving results and process improvements. Global Launch's mission is to help industrial B2B companies, typically with $10m to $100m revenue and high growth expectations, utilize Fractional Marketing resources to achieve their growth goals.
Until now, smaller and middle-market CEOs believed they lacked the size and scale to afford professional marketing expertise. Fractional Marketers, a relatively new business concept, can support smaller, rapidly growing companies at any stage of development. Whether you need additional marketing resources for an existing product line or customer segment, or for help recruiting and coaching an inexperienced marketing team to perform at the next level, we're here to help.
John A. Rudolf is SVP Producer and Head of Sales and Marketing for Simpson & McCrady LLC (SMC). Prior to joining SMC in July 2018, John spent 30+ years on the insurance carrier side, 24 years with American International Group (AIG). During his AIG carrier John developed many cutting-edge new products and had the privilege to manage many innovative solution-oriented divisions (I.e. Mergers and Acquisitions and Cyber Insurance). Additionally, John ended his carrier at AIG while being responsible for:
Prior to these roles, John was the Branch Manager of the Pittsburgh territory in the AIG Mid-Atlantic Region responsible for the overall development and execution of regional business strategies. John has over 37+ years of insurance industry experience. John holds a B.A. degree in economics from the University of Pittsburgh.
Lloyd helps business owners and senior leaders get what they want from their business.
While working as a young engineer fresh out of college, Lloyd started a part-time business helping businesses use their first computers. He later increased his attention to the business from part-time to full-time – and never looked back! In the decades that followed, that company (Wolf Consulting LLC) became a leading provider of computer support for small & mid-size businesses in the Greater Pittsburgh area. After 30 years, Lloyd successfully sold the business and retired from the company in 2019.
Over those 30 years, Lloyd experienced all the aspects of entrepreneurship – including some nice successes, as well his share of mistakes, setbacks and sleepless nights with frustrations about the business. He also received many blessings. One blessing came in 2015 when a trusted business friend introduced him to EOS® (the Entrepreneurial Operating System®). Lloyd and his leadership team successfully used the EOS concepts and tools for the last 3+ years he was running that business, and they still use it today.
EOS is a complete and proven system, with simple and practice tools, that helps you clarify your vision, gain real traction toward achieving every part of that vision, get the right organizational structure with the right people in the right seats, solve issues at their root, and build healthy teams. Lloyd loves what EOS did for his own business, and he has a passion for helping business owners and senior leaders achieve more and get everything they want from their business. Lloyd now works with businesses as a Certified EOS Implementer to help them successfully implement EOS – so just like him, the owners and leaders can experience the benefits in their businesses and their lives. For more information, visit https://www.eosworldwide.com/lloyd-wolf.