Lisa Clarke has 25 years of experience serving in operating roles for organizations in the manufacturing, technology and services industries, and has held executive roles across a wide range of operating disciplines in startup and mid-market companies. She has a track record of success building business infrastructure and leading large-scale growth and transformation initiatives. Her background has afforded her deep exposure to internal teams, Boards of Directors and investor stakeholders.

Lisa started her career as General Manager of the Custom Power Products division of Interpoint Corporation, a microelectronics and medical device manufacturer. After the company sold and spun off a division as a separate, public company, Lisa spent nearly 10 years in the big data storage industry at Advanced Digital Information Corporation (NASDAQ: ADIC). She held progressively responsible executive leadership positions in Channel Sales, Global Services, EMEA General Management (based in Paris) and as Co-EVP of Products, Sales and Service. During her tenure, the company conducted a secondary offering and completed many acquisitions, growing from less than $20M to over $460M in revenues. After a very successful exit, Lisa joined Rally Marketing Group, a VC-backed experiential marketing services platform company, where she was Chief Operating Officer, then Chief Executive Officer and Board Chair. Her next adventure was to facilitate the spin out of Amplero, where she became Chief Business officer of this Artificial Intelligence marketing software startup.

Lisa attended the University of Washington and completed her education at Kent State University, where she earned Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in business administration with Summa Cum Laude distinction.

Ms. Clarke is also an active member of the Seattle area community. She served in various leadership roles on the Board of Directors of the United Way of Snohomish County from 2003 through 2010 and as Board President at FareStart from 2008 – 2017. She enjoys teaching the occasional business course, serving on curriculum advisory boards and has been a guest speaker on cross-cultural business topics at the University of Washington’s Foster School of Business.

Chuck Gottschalk founded NextLevel with the clear intent of building a premier firm comprised of exceptional executives collectively committed to creating value in our clients; doing so through excellence in service, knowledge sharing to bring the best of our firm-wide capabilities, and a collaborative spirit always focused on our clients’ best interests. He established a mission statement on day-one focused on building enterprise value in our clients – which now serves as our tag line to reinforce and communicate that as our primary objective.

The NextLevel innovative model was inspired by the wealth of insights gained through his many years both in executive leadership roles and from building and managing an executive services regional practice that served a large, diverse set of private and public companies in a variety of industries and stages. Those insights applied to today’s dynamic and fluid business environment, where management teams operate with limited bandwidth and where “lean” is the order of the day, resulted in an uncommonly versatile approach to client engagement structure and access to exceptional talent that sets NextLevel apart.

Prior to founding NextLevel, Chuck launched, led the growth of, and managed the Pacific Northwest practice of Tatum, a national financial executive services firm, where he served as Managing Partner for seven years. In that role he launched and built one of the firm’s most successful practices, growing it to 50 professionals with offices in both Seattle and Portland.

Chuck’s background includes over 20 years of deep and varied executive leadership, including a mix of senior strategic, operational, and financial experience at the CEO, CFO and Board member levels with emerging-growth companies. As a CEO and CFO in three venture-backed emerging technology companies he successfully led equity and debt financings, strategic partnering initiatives, the spin-out of a corporate division, and the sale of two of the businesses to publicly-traded companies.

He spent the first several years of his career as a CPA at Price Waterhouse (now PwC) where, as a Director, he spearheaded the Seattle office’s new-media emerging company practice. He also held the position of VP, Financial Advisor at Bernstein Global Wealth Management whereas a Series 7 and 66 securities license holder he worked closely with business owners and executives in evaluating liquidity strategies and related planning.

He served twelve years on the Board of the Northwest chapter of the National Association of Corporate Directors (NACD) and is a current NACD Fellow. His Board service has been in both for-profit and nonprofit organizations, including current service as a Board member, Advisory Board member and on committees of nonprofits.

Doug Adler has 30 years of experience driving shareholder value and maximizing outcomes as a trusted strategic and operational financial leader and advisor, having built numerous leading practices at Investment Banking and Consulting firms and as a CFO for a PE-backed Technology Services company.

Doug is an active member of the Portland area community. He is currently President of Financial Executives International’s Portland Chapter, having served in various leadership roles on the Board of Directors since 2016. He has also been on the Board/Committee of the Association for Corporate Growth’s (‘ACG’) ACG Cup Northwest since its inception, acting as the Chief Judge and Head of Judging for this Investment Banking-style case competition of leading MBA and undergraduate Finance programs in the Pacific Northwest.  He has been a speaker at numerous national conferences and with local professional organizations on cloud computing, wireless towers, wireless services and other technology and telecom specialties.

Doug spent 14 years as a Managing Director of Investment Banking at TD Securities in New York where he co-founded and co-lead their mergers and acquisitions practice in the telecom, media and technology sectors and their Equity Capital Markets business.  He crafted their strategy and built the groups from start-ups to a leading boutique competitive with major banks; attained rank as one of “Top 5” private equity placement agents in the U.S. within 3 years and as one of the “Top 5” M&A Advisors to the Wireless Communications sectors in the U.S. within 5 years.

As CFO of Atmosera, one of the leading Managed Cloud Hosting companies, Doug helped set its new strategic direction, becoming one of the first six companies in the world to be selected and certified by Microsoft as Azure Certified Hybrid Managed Services Provider. He focused the organization on sustainable growth and profitability, introducing his ‘RASA’ objectives to all aspects of operations and Sales: Repeatable, Automated, Scalable and Auditable. He was able to guide this capital-intensive business from significantly FCF negative to FCF breakeven within 18 months of joining by negotiating with vendors to reduce equipment costs by over 25% and reducing DSO of A/R from 40 to 29.  He also led the ‘Quote to Cash’ project to automate, refine & integrate Salesforce, quoting systems and a new billing system to replace two antiquated systems. He drastically downsized the Product Catalog and helped create automated, guided selling to the existing quoting system.

Doug has structured and raised all forms and stages of equity and debt capital; he has completed $700M+ in private equity and mezzanine placements, participated in $7B+ of public equity offerings, including IPOs and financed $20B+ in loans and high yield bonds. He has directly led dozens of acquisitions and exits ($8+B in total value), using expert analytics to determine strategic value and fit plus financial, accounting and operations due diligence to negotiate advantageous terms.  He has a career of working with and for Private Equity and Venture Capital backed companies and their sponsors, as well as publicly traded firms. Doug has extensive experience in operating, managing and negotiating with all forms of equity backers.

Eddie has over 30 years of experience serving in C-suite operating roles for varying sizes of public/private organizations (from start-up to Fortune 100). His experience has primarily been in the high-tech industry, but he also has cross-industry expertise through several in-depth professional services engagements. Eddie has a track record of success in all phases of direct and indirect revenue generation and propelling growth, from ramping to re-igniting to retention to next-generation revenues. He is adept at developing, implementing, and executing business strategies that produce profitable outcomes and ensuring leadership teams are aligned to perform at their peak. His background has afforded him deep exposure to international markets (particularly the Asia Pacific Region), all sizes of organizations and their management teams, partner ecosystems, Boards of Directors, and investor stakeholders.

Eddie began his high-tech career with IBM starting in sales and moved to roles with increasing responsibilities over his 16-year tenure. He moved 10 times accepting promotions in product management, marketing, sales management (1^st & 2^nd line) and executive sales management (3^rd line regional responsibilities), taking international assignments in the Asia Pacific region in strategy (Tokyo, Japan and Singapore), operations (Hong Kong) and Country General Manager (Indonesia). Upon returning to the U.S., Eddie held executive roles and worked with publicly held high-tech companies in the Pacific Northwest from start-ups to turn-arounds, achieving successful outcomes/exits with each. In addition, Eddie has cross-industry consulting experience in construction, consumer retail, hospitality, insurance, banking, higher education, and non-profit organizations.

Eddie holds a Bachelor of Arts in Communications from the University of Washington. He has been inducted into the UW Communications Hall of Fame and recognized with the prestigious UW Distinguished Alumni Service Award in 2017. He is also an active member of the Seattle community who serves or has served on the Board of Directors of a dozen educational, humanitarian, and arts organizations, including Boys & Girls Clubs of King County, PAWS, Sound Health, and the University of Washington School of Arts & Sciences. As Seattle Office Associate Managing Partner at NextLevel, Eddie works directly with clients to structure and oversee engagement performance.

Paul is a multi-faceted executive who has held C-level positions in nine companies and has over 30 years of demonstrated success driving breakthrough financial performance and operational efficiency for a diverse range of organizations. He has extensive understanding of all core business functions (Operations/Sales/Marketing/Finance/HR/Engineering) combined with proven strengths as a change agent able to lead startup, turnaround, corporate development, and exit strategy initiatives aimed at maximizing owner/shareholder value. He has extensive buy/sell-side experience in M&A due diligence, planning, and integration, and is skilled in structuring venture capital investments and driving PE/VC/Angel fundraising activities for early-stage technology firms. He brings added-value background as a Board Member for multiple early-stage technical and scientific ventures, as well as possesses entrepreneurial experience gained as the co-founder of three separate technology startups. Paul’s investing experience came from being a Partner at Encompass Ventures of Seattle, investing in early-stage technology companies.

Paul has worked closely with university technology transfer offices and other startup-oriented organizations, and was an Executive-In-Residence at the University of Chicago office of Technology and Intellectual Property and an EIR at Illinois Ventures. He is a member of the Chicago Innovation Mentors—now called Matter, a Chicago healthcare incubator. He was also on the advisory board at the Cornell School of Hotel Administration’s Institute for Hospitality Entrepreneurship. Paul holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in Electrical Engineering from the University of Washington.