About Us.

We are passionate business and finance professionals brought together by common interests, work-ethic, desire to help others and excitement to achieve more together.

Collaborating since 2003, Official in 2019

Our team of individuals has had a working relationship varying from three to fifteen years.  Most recently, our team worked with a Toledo area business and technology consulting firm, spinning off, independently to form Catalyst Element Consulting in January of 2019. 

We work well together, have very similar "whys", and truly believe we provide more value to our clients together than we ever could apart because of our unique backgrounds and experiences.

Our Goal: More

Together let’s achieve more. Growth. Profit. Efficiency. Let’s evaluate new ideas and take advantage of existing resources in new ways. Let’s identify gaps and work together to bridge them. Let’s discover the bottlenecks and eliminate them. Let’s build teams that transform and design systems that work. It all starts with a conversation about your business, where you think you are and where you want to be. As the catalyst for change you need, bringing  broad experience over multiple industries including public accounting, manufacturing, non-profit, agriculture, and direct response, leveraging an accounting and finance background together with a deep understanding of technology and systems, your future and success are our passion and our business.

Our Team

Cortney Schaefer
Executive and Financial Consultant

​QuickBooks Solution Provider

Growing up in a family business, Cortney knows the energy and commitment small organizations require to thrive and grow. Since those days, her career has provided her experience in multiple roles and industries, within both growing and extremely constrained organizations.

She loves to help others: people, teams, companies, boards, and volunteers, do and become more than they thought possible. 

Always with an eye toward the future, Cortney is at her best in dynamic situations, simplifying the complex and creatively identifying all the options.  She intuitively draws the best out of people and maximizes their effectiveness to bring achievement.

Favorite Color: Yellow
Hobby: Yard work
Super-skill: Motivation

Kellie Loar
Dental and Business Consultant

QuickBooks Solution Provider

Small town upbringings build a sense of community and caring, both of which Kellie uses in her daily work with clients.  

Kellie has a strong background in accounting, systems and  process improvement.  She's worked in banking, manufacturing and non-profit. 

Teambuilding and system development are two areas in which she excels, driving unified understanding, and collaborative work processes through exceptional communication, documentation and follow up.  She works tirelessly with clients to plan ahead, solve problems and create policies and procedures to ensure consistent, reliable and effective outcomes.


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Favorite Color: Pink
​Hobby: Cross stitch
Super-skill: Problem Solving

Tracey Smith
Business and Financial Consultant

Certified QuickBooks ProAdvisor

Honesty, clarity, no nonsense. Tracey accomplishes the impossible because she doesn't give up.

The powerhouse behind financial reporting, Tracey helps clients understand their books and look into the future with effective budgeting and business models.

Tracey's career has included the full range of clerical to director roles.  She has amazing skill with new clients, quickly understanding complex systems, databases and software. ​She digs into the details and takes pride in learning the client's business and the financial process from start to finish.  She invests herself in the client's mission and always goes the extra mile to ensure that information is accurate and timely.

​Favorite Place: The beach
Favorite Animal: Dogs
Super-skill: Simplification

Susie Myrice
Dental and Financial Consultant

QuickBooks Solution Provider

Humble to fault, Susie's career began in dental patient claims processing and accounting - an area of ever-changing and challenging regulation and compliance.

Although her day to day still involves patient accounting, Susie has expanded her knowledge and skills to include accounts receivable processing for non-profit and for profit as well as payroll processing.

Susie is a team-player who cares that the client's internal team is well trained and supported, which moves all of us  toward a goal of accuracy and timeliness - important when dealing with large organizations and high volumes of data.



​Favorite Color: Purple
Favorite pastime: Family
Super-skill: Patience

Lori Tuckerman
Business and Financial Consultant

QuickBooks Solution Provider

Project management, systems, organization, and an attitude that "dives in" and "figures it out", Lori is a true problem solver and brings the glue that often holds our clients and our team's work together.

Lori's work experience spans automotive manufacturing, office and project management, operations, bookkeeping, and more!  She's a consumate learner, maintaining her insurance license, earning Microsoft's "Office Specialist" certification, and recently completing her BA at the University of Toledo in Business Management.

Our client's adore working with her because she's approachable and empathetic; she's exceptional at all that she does because she's a true achiever.

Favorite Color: Purple/Yellow
Hobby: Raised-bed gardening
Super-skill: Coordinating Chaos

Trusted Partners

We appreciate that it takes a special relationship to trust your company, processes and  financial information to an outsider.  We take your trust very seriously.

We're committed to maintaining confidentiality while we also endeavor to suggest and help connect our clients with other potentially worthwhile partners.  Catalyst can't be everything to everyone, we promise we won't try.  But we know and have great respect for other organizations  and people who have similar motivation and styles in various complementary industries. Take our suggestions, or don't.  Having more options is typically a positive place to be.