Our Team
A Little Bit More About Us
Cathy Light
Chief Executive Officer
In recognition of her extraordinary work, Smart Business nominated Cathy Light for the “Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year” award in both 2009 and 2010.
Before venturing out as an entrepreneur, Cathy worked in the corporate world in a variety of leadership roles, including Vice President and General Manager of Sunrise Technologies, Inc. and Senior Sales and Marketing Executive at Fuji Optical Systems, Ltd. She began her trailblazing career at a start-up company known as Apple Computer.
Cathy is a globally recognized speaker known for engaging and inspiring her audiences. Her commitment to helping others extends to active leadership within the community. She currently serves on the Advisory Board for the Business and Economic School at Boise State University and mentors MBA students when time permits.
Dr. Thomas Tonkin, PhD
Chief Data and Knowledge Officer
Dr. Thomas Tonkin, PhD is an executive in Professional Services and Software Sales arena and has over 25 years of business and technology experience. He is currently serving as the CEO of the Conservatory Group as well as the Co-Founder and Dean of Students that the Sales Conservatory. In addition, he is also the Head of Strategic Accounts at SAMI Games, the first crowd-sourced global solution for soft skills.
Dr. Tonkin holds a Ph.D. in Organizational Leadership from Regent University (Virginia Beach, VA) as well as a Master of Science in Organizational Leadership, with a focus on Leadership and Management from Regis University (Denver, CO). Dr. Tonkin holds multiple business certifications, and is a leadership expert. In addition, Dr. Tonkin was an Adjunct Professor at the Forbes School of Business at Ashford University where he taught Leadership in Organizations, Organizational Behavior and various other leadership and management courses. Dr. Tonkin is an award-winning researcher and author with several blogs, articles, and interviews to his name focusing on DE&I, Learning and Development, and sales leadership.
Mark N Tuggle, PhD
Learning & Development SME
Dr. Mark Tuggle is a highly relational and results oriented executive with 20+ years of leadership experience focused on organizational and personal performance development, with special emphasis on sales, leadership, and educational success. He excels at identifying organizational, systemic challenges and collaboratively devising and implementing measurable, successful solutions. He is an expert facilitator possessing dynamic communication skills, with extensive presentation experience ranging from one-on-one interaction to speaking to groups of over 500 people.
Mark places a premium on developing open, honest relationships with his clients and colleagues so that they can work together to overcome tough challenges. Mark enjoys leading teams through difficult challenges and transitions in a way that brings them together and strengthens their unity and performance.
Mark’s background and experience across various sectors – military, nonprofit, and for-profit business – have helped him to maintain a results-oriented, actionable focus when it comes to leadership, learning, and organizational success. His approach keeps his clients’ objectives in the realm of achievable outcomes, rather than lofty platitudes that never effect lasting change. Whether he works with you in areas of problem-solving, change management, leadership development, or talent management, you can be certain you will walk away with an implementation plan that is grounded with measurable, actionable, and achievable steps and goals.
Everyone talks about measuring results but few people or organizations truly know what that means, or how to do it. Dr. Tuggle’s experience in developing and analyzing surveys and assessments provides the data clients need to truly measure change and success. Mark led a research project for onboarding sales reps at a Fortune 100 company in which he measured key metrics that correctly predicted retention and performance results for the new reps. He recently completed a social selling research project used by a top sales training organization to help develop its social selling training program. His current work on leadership balance is designed to help leaders identify their unique balance of three key areas for healthy leadership. He has developed proprietary assessments that measure different aspects of organizational culture, health, and employee engagement.