Partners
Christian Barry
Christian is Managing Principal at The Croton Group. He helps leadership teams and their organizations to achieve and sustain high performance through continuous improvement and disciplined commitment to learning.
Christian brings the perspective of a practitioner across four GE leadership eras this millennium, each with its own distinctive approach to culture and leadership development.
He was an executive leader at General Electric’s iconic corporate university “GE Crotonville” for nearly a decade. As GE’s global leader of customer education, Christian engaged with hundreds of enterprise customers including government ministers and CxOs across the Energy, Aerospace, and Healthcare industries.
He developed a diverse network of distinguished university faculty, learning consultants, and Crotonville alumni to support programs across the U.S., Canada, China, APAC, Africa, and the Middle East. Christian previously served as GE Healthcare’s Chief Learning Officer, where he led Learning & Development for the $18 billion business with 50K+ employees.
Prior to coming to Crotonville, Christian built expertise in Learning and Teaming through leadership roles at three venerable organizations: GE Healthcare, McKinsey & Company, and the U.S. Navy. His tenure at GE Healthcare included business roles spanning global business development, P&L management, and Lean Six Sigma deployment. He revitalized GE’s Healthcare Institute, the business’s global education campus for leadership development and technical training. As a McKinsey engagement manager, he led small management consulting teams serving clients across multiple industries. Christian proudly started his career as a naval officer in the U.S. Navy Submarine Force, where he learned process rigor, leadership under pressure, and resilience.
Christian is a part-time faculty member at Northeastern University, teaching in the executive education program. He earned a Master’s in Engineering Management from Northwestern University and an MBA from Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management, where he was also elected class president. He received a Bachelor’s of Science degree from Cornell University, where he majored in Operations Research and Industrial Engineering on a full scholarship. His certifications include Nuclear Engineer Officer qualification from the U.S. Department of Energy and the Quality Leader credential, the highest distinction in GE’s Six Sigma certification program.
Christian believes that learning is a life-long journey that encompasses the mind, body, heart, and spirit. He serves as a catechetical teacher at his church and is a long-time trustee at one of America’s top academic high schools. He is a long-distance runner and an endlessly curious contributor to multiple book clubs. He resides in the Washington, DC area with his wife and daughters.
Betsy Bingham
Betsy Bingham is a Senior Advisor at The Croton Group, where she helps organizations implement lean operating systems to drive transformational business results. With over 40 years of global experience across supply chain, operations, and general management, she brings a rare breadth and depth of knowledge spanning the automotive, industrial, healthcare, materials, software, and aerospace sectors.
During her tenure at GE, Betsy led lean transformation efforts for GE Digital and GE Aerospace. She was also a key architect of FLIGHT DECK, GE’s proprietary lean operating system, and a recognized thought leader in enterprise-wide lean deployment.
Betsy’s expertise in problem solving is foundational to her work. As a master trainer at both GE and Danaher, she developed and delivered training on this core element of lean while also coaching numerous teams in this critical process. At GE, she consistently worked alongside senior leadership teams to establish and scale effective operating rhythms that drive meaningful improvements in the metrics that matter most.
A lead instructor at Crotonville, GE’s leadership development center, Betsy taught lean business systems with a particular focus on hoshin kanri, helping leaders translate strategy into breakthrough performance.
Betsy is known for her practical, results-driven approach. She builds the capabilities of senior leaders while working directly at the genba to drive immediate customer impact. Her style blends strategic insight with hands-on execution, making lean principles actionable and sustainable across all levels of an organization. Betsy is widely recognized for her ability to simplify complex concepts and turn them into practical solutions that resonate with teams and drive measurable outcomes.
Kate Bouyain
Kate Bouyain serves as Managing Partner of The People Side, a company that gets to the heart of human performance through leadership development, team development and executive coaching services. Kate is a thought leader in learning organization transformation and organization effectiveness, as well as leadership development. Her outstanding ability to engage stakeholders, diagnose problems and create strategies that deliver desired outcomes earn her credibility with senior HR Executives and learning teams.
Kate has a 25+ year career that has spanned Compensation, Benefits, HR Strategist and Generalist work, along with Learning & Leadership Development. She has had the privilege to work in not-for-profit healthcare, as well as in Fortune 500 Companies like GE and Boeing.
Kate joined General Electric in 2005, going through GE’s prestigious HR Leadership Program. Kate spent the first five years of her GE career as an HR Business Partner in the GE Energy Business. In 2010 Kate’s career shifted to her passion of developing leaders, where she led the Leadership Essential Skills curricula globally for GE Energy. In 2012 Kate moved to the GE Crotonville organization where she had the privilege to play a strategic role in GE’s learning transformation to centralize all functional & leadership development within GE Crotonville. During this time Kate’s focus was to ensure global delivery of core development programs across the world for all GE Businesses.
Kate holds her Bachelor of Arts from Iowa State University, as well as an MBA. Kate holds her SPHR, and is also an ACC certified Coach. She is certified in several development assessments with a special focus on vertical development utilizing the Leadership Circle Profile. Kate resides in Kansas City, Missouri with her husband Samuel and their two daughters Elisabeth and Olivia.
Today, Kate’s passion is building upon Crotonville’s approach to experiential learning by going even deeper to help leaders shift their mindsets and expand into even higher levels of capacity and growth. This matters because organizations are navigating huge changes in a volatile world and people are burning out. Being an effective leader is more important than ever — not just to survive but to thrive in today’s workplace. Kate is humbled to lead a team of 50 global consultants at The People Side, who focus on this deep growth and development of both individuals and teams. Many of The People Side’s consultants are also Crotonville Alumni and continue to bring to life the magic of GE Crotonville’s development experiences. If you are looking to design & deliver award-winning development programs, or bring your team together for a real conversation, than The People Side’s deeply human focus to development could be a good fit for you!
Stephanie Broaders
Stephanie Broaders is the Founding Partner at Spark Well Consulting, a company offering the design and delivery of high impact learning, executive coaching, and HR consultation. Stephanie thoughtfully blends her HR experience with a collaborative approach to help organizations and high-potential leaders realize their greatest impact. She combines decades of experience in world-class, global talent and leadership development at General Electric with a passion to help others as they unlock their purpose and reach new levels of success.
As a senior leader at GE’s renowned Crotonville corporate university, she directed a program to shift the company’s culture and equip the seniormost executives with the mindset and tools to drive performance through Lean tools and principles.
Stephanie joined GE in 2000 as a human resources manager and steadily progressed through various leadership roles, including a learning leadership role where she was responsible for delivering leadership development and professional skills training to a 15,000 global employee base. She began her career at Duke Energy (formerly Cincinnati Gas and Electric), where she gained expertise in organization development and strategic planning.
Stephanie is committed to unlocking potential and shaping the future of leadership through intentional talent strategies. Throughout her GE tenure, she leveraged her people development skills to create unique opportunities that built strong, adaptable executives. As an executive leader in talent development, she curated an experiential workshop to foster a talent pipeline and assess high-potential leaders. In addition, she led succession planning for critical VP roles, including conducting psychometric assessments and closing development gaps. She played a significant leadership role spearheading an accelerated leadership program, through which she partnered with senior leaders to identify and develop future executives. In her last role at GE, she led the talent management and succession planning efforts for a 2,000+ employee, $18B P&L.
Stephanie has an MBA from Xavier University, a BBA from the University of Cincinnati. She is a Certified Professional Co-Active Coach (CPCC) and a member of Marshall Goldsmith’s 100 Coaches community. She is certified in the Leadership Versatility Index (LVI), the Hogan, and DISC assessments.
Stephanie resides in Charlotte, NC with her husband and adult children where she serves on the Board of Directors for Classroom Central, a non-profit fostering equity in education. Stephanie also serves, part-time, as a Program Director at UNC Executive Development where she partners with organizations to provide learning services to their leaders.
Leiza Brock
Leiza Brock is a Principal at The Croton Group, where she helps organizations achieve sustainable high performance through strategic learning and leadership development. Drawing from over three decades of experience at General Electric, she brings deep expertise in developing leaders, driving organizational transformation, and building cultures of continuous improvement.
As a senior leader at GE’s renowned Crotonville corporate university, Leiza played an instrumental role in shaping the learning strategy that contributed to GE’s recent successful transformation. She has particular expertise in designing and implementing leadership development programs that align with organizational objectives and drive measurable business results. Her experience spans multiple business functions including HR, sales and marketing, operations, and product development.
Throughout her career, Leiza has demonstrated success in navigating complex organizational challenges, from high-growth periods and acquisitions to transformative turnarounds. At GE Corporate, she developed and managed multiple entry-level leadership programs across finance, IT, and commercial functions. She was a key architect of the prestigious Corporate Leadership Staff (CLS) program and oversaw learning for the Corporate Audit Staff (CAS), both cornerstone programs in developing GE’s future leaders.
Earlier in her career at GE Capital Fleet Services, Leiza successfully unified teams from multiple acquired companies by creating an integrated sales training strategy. She later played a pivotal role in building the sales and marketing capabilities that drove international growth for GE Money, demonstrating her ability to align learning initiatives with business strategy and results.
Leiza brings a holistic perspective to leadership development, emphasizing the importance of open dialogue and mutual respect in building high-performing teams. She believes that sustainable organizational success comes from creating environments where individuals feel heard and empowered to contribute their best thinking to collective decisions.
A graduate of the University of Notre Dame, Leiza embodies the university’s commitment to fostering open discussion and inquiry in her leadership approach. She maintains strong ties to the Notre Dame community and remains a passionate supporter of Irish athletics.
Leiza resides in South Carolina with her husband, where she actively provides operational and strategic guidance to his manufacturing company. This hands-on experience with small business operations complements her enterprise-level expertise, giving her unique insight into the challenges and opportunities organizations face at different stages of growth.
Ginny Ertl
A global leadership consultant with over 40 years of experience with a passion for developing leaders who inspire and shape the future while delivering results. Ginny consults with CEOs and their teams on developing strategies, implementing organization change, enhancing organizational performance, developing executive teams, and coaching individual leaders. Her clients span a wide range of industries including Financial Services, Banking, Insurance, Industrial, Healthcare, Pharmaceutical, Technology Services, Computer Software, Computer Hardware, and Consumer Products in addition to the Non-Profit and Government sectors. Ginny is a faculty member for the California Institute of Technology Future Skills Academy as the course leader for Leading Change.
Prior to founding ConsultingWorks in 2013, Ginny spent 24 years at GE in a variety of executive leadership roles in the areas of change management, culture shaping, executive leadership education, talent management, succession planning and organizational development at GE Crotonville, GE Corporate, and GE Capital. With her expertise in mobilizing leaders to impact and sustain change, she was instrumental in driving the company’s top strategic initiatives.
Ginny was a member of the “Re-imagining Crotonville” team, responsible for modernizing the leadership development experience and content, and the refresh, redesign, and re-utilization of the campus. In her role as Director of Executive Leadership Development she created and led GE Leadership Explorations – Crotonville’s first leadership education platform for GE Officers. At this time, Ginny also championed the launch of GE’s lean start-up simplification initiative, FastWorks.
Prior to Crotonville, Ginny held various roles at GE Corporate including the Global Employee Value Proposition Leader. In this role Ginny worked with the GE businesses around the world to develop and implement GE’s Employee Value Proposition focused on attracting and retaining top talent. At this time, she also served as the Learning and Development leader for the Corporate Leadership Staff (CLS) program, a premier program for developing future GE business leaders. Ginny was instrumental in the design, development and launch of the program.
Ginny joined GE as Executive Audit Manager for the GE Capital Audit Staff and went on to lead the simplification efforts for GE Capital’s Finance Organization. In this role she took part in the company-wide roll out of Work-Out, as a facilitator in GE’s Work-Out Facilitation Network and a Change Acceleration Process (CAP) Coach.
Ginny served as VP, Learning and Development for GE Money where she built and led the global Learning and Development organization delivering leadership and commercial training to employees in over fifty-two countries worldwide.
Ginny is a Smithsonian Laureate for innovation in training technology and instructional design. Before coming to GE, Ginny spent seven years at KPMG, holding the title of Audit Manager. Ginny holds a bachelor’s degree in accounting from Boston College and is a Certified Public Accountant.
Ginny resides in Stamford, CT and has 3 adult children who have settled in the area.
Candyce Penteado
Candyce Penteado is a recognized expert in leadership development, team dynamics, and experiential learning. She is known for helping leaders and senior teams unlock capacity, navigate complexity, and accelerate meaningful growth. As Managing Partner of The People Side, a global consulting firm with more than 50 practitioners, they lead engagements that touch thousands of the world’s top leaders every year – masterfully weaving business acumen with creative facilitation techniques to inspire breakthrough thinking and programming.
Candyce’s roots run deep with GE. She joined the company in 1998 as the Head of Staffing & Recruitment at GE Fleet Services, where she went on to create Fleet Services University and partnered with Crotonville to consolidate the company’s learning curriculum. Once certified in Crotonville’s cornerstone programs, she became a go-to instructor for professional skills and leadership development. In 2001, she relocated to GE Money in New York, where she traveled globally delivering Crotonville programs in the field.
After leaving GE in 2006, Candyce was invited to return as a Crotonville faculty member — a role she held for more than a decade. During that time, she served as a lead instructor for many of GE’s flagship courses, including Foundations of Leadership (FOL), Leadership Development Course (LDC), Advanced Manager Course (AMC), and Manager Development Course (MDC). She also played a key role in designing and facilitating the Executive Leadership Challenge (ELC).
Her influence didn’t stop at GE. Candyce has also designed and delivered award-winning development programs for numerous global companies including McDonald’s, Boeing, and the Target Corporation. She is often tapped by senior executive teams facing moments of transition or transformation because she creates the conditions for real conversation, deeper connection, and aligned action.
Candyce holds a degree in Communications and is certified in numerous leadership assessments and experiential simulations, which she uses to elevate both the rigor and humanity of her engagements. She is also the author of Finding Your Z and the host of The Leadership Living Room podcast, where she explores the inner life of leaders and the outer work of leadership. She is based in Minneapolis with her husband Fred and their daughters Olivia and Luciana.
Today, Candyce’s passion is helping leaders thrive at work. Alongside her team of seasoned consultants — many of whom are also Crotonville alumni — she is transforming organizations one leader and one team at a time. Together, they carry forward the best of GE’s development philosophy while bringing fresh energy, relevance, and humanity to today’s most pressing leadership challenges. If you’re looking to reignite your leadership development strategy, or bring your senior teams together in a powerful way, let The People Side offer their expertise and bring the world-class Crotonville spirit into your organization.
Caryn Kaftal
Caryn is Founder and Senior Advisor at c2c partnership—a boutique strategy advisory firm focusing on organization transformation and change leadership.
She brings over 30 years of experience working with CEOs, Senior Leaders and Boards on topics related to leadership, learning and large-scale organization change. She is a generalist across industries and geographies, working globally in collaboration with expert partners and internal collaborators to address complex business challenges.
She specializes in CxO advisory and senior team alignment, helping senior leaders architect and lead transformational change. She also has deep expertise in talent management, leadership development and building centers of excellence as levers to accelerate and embed new ways of working.
Caryn has divided her career between internal change leadership roles and external consulting roles. She is a trained facilitator and coach, certified in various assessment instruments.
Caryn recently returned to General Electric as a Leader in Residence as GE reinvented their learning organization and set out to transform the company under then new CEO Larry Culp through Lean. Earlier in her career, she was an Executive at General Electric working as part of Jack Welch’s transformation of GE.
Caryn also served as an SVP at GlaxoSmithKline where she built Centers of Excellence in Global Talent, Leadership and Organization Development, and combined the work of the CoEs in the role of Head of Transformation, to support massive change across the business. Caryn also spent several years in change management consulting with Mercer Delta (now Oliver Wyman), returning in 2019 (through 2021) to help build their Organization Effectiveness practice. Caryn has also served as an External Advisor to McKinsey & Company, as a Partner at Monitor Deloitte, and as a Senior Client Partner with Korn/Ferry International as they embarked on launching an integrated human capital solutions business.
Caryn’s clients have included GE, ThomsonReuters, Chanel, The NYT Co., WPP, IPG, BNPParibas, adidas, The Met, L’Oréal, Sanofi, Deutsche Post DHL, Iron Mountain, ZFS, Credit Suisse, OECD, FMC, Scholastic, EDF Energy, Caisse Geral de Depositos (CGD), The International Herald Tribune, The World Bank, Lafarge, Ford, BMW, The Limited, Corning, March for our Lives, BMS and AT&T.
Caryn earned an MBA from Harvard Business School where she received the Horace W. Goldsmith Fellowship for Contributions to Public Service Management. She earned an MA from Wesleyan University in Communications and a BA from the University of Pennsylvania in International Relations and European History. She teaches globally on topics related to integrated talent management, transforming strategic staff functions, and leading change.
Caryn currently lives in Montreal, working with businesses around the world. She is fluent in English and has worked in French. She is married to artist Felice Panagrosso. They have two grown children they raised together in France.
Caryn currently lives in Connecticut, working with businesses around the world. She is fluent in English and works in French. She is married to artist Felice Panagrosso. They have two grown children they raised together in France.