Bio

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.