Who We Are

Suzanne Duret — Founder & CEO

As a renowned strategist, Suzanne has tackled all facets of starting and growing businesses, wearing every hat from idea generator to CEO. This unique expertise brings the skills to guide any size and type of business, or individual professional, with an understanding that academics doesn’t offer. She has extensive experience in nurturing human potential, customizing business development, growth innovation, shaping corporate cultures, and rapid problem-solving.

Suzanne often sees consistent issues throughout companies of every size. Some include a lack of activities to uncover opportunities and also reveal potentially damaging issues, no effective process to rapidly solve known problems, and cultures that don’t foster entrepreneurial mindsets.

In 2008, Suzanne developed the Synergy Conversation methodology and PACE trainings. She has passionately helped clients advance with these and other customized innovative solutions. She has played a role in the success of countless startups, small businesses, corporations, and individuals.

“All problems have a solution when
you know how to ask the right questions.”

Going back in time, Suzanne co-founded a medical device company and successfully raised venture capital. Using her communication and strategy skills, she negotiated a manufacturing contract for an initial inventory of devices with no upfront money. She then negotiated multiple signed contracts, within only 10 days, for nationwide sales and distribution coverage. Just a short 21 months later that business was successfully sold to Ballard Medical Products (later acquired by Kimberly-Clark).

As a side note, in the mid-90s Suzanne wrote and self-published Inventing for Wealth, with a Foreword by world-renowned businessman Tony Robbins. She also appeared in Tony’s “Personal Power” television program where she shared her inspirational success story. Suzanne did not know Tony and utilized her strategies in order to gain an initial meeting; the rest is history.

Lisa Rothstein — Collaborative Partner

A quick study in any industry category, Lisa specializes in “translating” innovation and complex topics into relatable human messages, and rapidly distilling a high volume of information down to its essence. Brands impacted include Intel, Chevrolet, Capital One Bank, Samsung Electronics, the RSA Cybersecurity Conference, and many more. She has also helped shape the messages of thought leaders such as Tony Robbins, Robert Kiyosaki and Loral Langemeier.

As a brand strategist, visual facilitator and speaker/trainer, Lisa uses a combination of words and drawings, as well as brand storytelling frameworks, to help organizations see and talk about their customers, products, culture, and stories in ways that foster innovation, collaboration, creativity, and communication.

Lisa is the award-winning advertising agency creative director best known for the long-running Wait’ll We Get Our Hanes on You campaign that disrupted an industry category and transformed plain white underwear into America’s favorite casual fashion brand.

“We can only get somewhere
when we truly ‘get’ each other.”

Lisa’s talks on Brand Storytelling and on Doodling for Communication have been featured at the Adobe 99U Conference, the Backend of Innovation Conference, and at Merck’s Product Manager Day. She is also a published New Yorker cartoonist, an award-winning screenwriter, and a featured author and illustrator in several best-selling books.

In her over two decades of agency experience that began on Madison Avenue and included 11 years in Paris, France, Lisa created and led national and international campaigns for IBM, Unilever, Colgate-Palmolive, Johnson & Johnson, and many more. As a native New Yorker, Lisa is usually the fastest talker in any room.

Liat Zohar — Collaborative Partner

Liat is a keynote speaker, body language expert, and advanced empowerment and leadership trainer. Her work spans corporations, universities, and individuals; clients have included Lockheed Martin, Hyatt, Precision, Arizona State University, Colgate University, and San Jose University, to name a few.

Liat’s exceptional skills in reading body language and micro-expressions is pivotal for the work we do with our Synergy Conversations and other evaluation processes for clients.

For over twenty years Liat has helped employees, students, and individual clients through interactive workshops and coaching. Clients learn to expand communication and leadership skills, navigate past challenges and experiences, increase motivation, enhance creativity, and positively change how they communicate with others.

“Everything is meaningless
except for the meaning we give it.”

Liat is the creator of a body language card kit and a body language phone app for fast learning and quick reference. Upon hearing of her BA in Psychology and Child Development from SJSU, she was hired by Bay Area Project P.R.I.D.E. (Prevention, Resource, Information, and Drug Education) to create interactive workshops for teens at risk. She also received her Empowerment and Leadership Coaching certification from IPEC (Institute for Professional Empowerment Coaching).

In 2021 Liat and her husband made a permanent move from San Jose, California to Tampa, FL. The move was sparked by her long-time friendship and business relationship with Suzanne Duret, who first hired Liat in 2012 to participate as a speaker for her women’s event. Together they enjoy training clients on emotional well-being, workplace stress, perceptions and attitudes, leadership, body language, micro expressions, and confidence skills.

Gary Rennilson — Collaborative Partner

Gary attended one of the world’s first International World Wide Web Conferences. Since then he has spent a lifetime developing and implementing cutting edge IT platforms, software development, web-based and digital strategies, complex online sales funnels, CRM management, and technology-based growth tactics. Gary helps our clients to “look under the hood” on their technology in order to discover opportunities, reveal potential problems, and communicate clearly to management in non-tech terms.

Records were broken when Gary was tasked with leading a project for Teledyne Ryan. Coming in late to the game, 9 months behind competing companies like Lockheed Martin, he led a team to develop a new airplane in 90 days and won the government contract. Gary took a different development path than competitors and also had teams coordinated on round-the-clock shifts in order to develop the initial model. He pulled off the impossible with innovation, leadership, and impactful team coordination.

Gary was responsible for designing and directing implementation of the first successful B2B e-commerce solution within the computer distribution industry. This was an e-commerce sales application for Intelligent Electronics (later acquired by Ingram Micro) that generated $2 million per day in sales via the Internet, at an 8x cost savings.

Utilizing his innovative approaches, Gary also managed the design and deployment of a live e-commerce production environment for Celestial Seasonings tea manufacturer and also worked with Boston Market to streamline their customer satisfaction processes.

“Inside a company’s success there is technology
that requires concise communication for proper execution.”

Historic times… Gary had the thrill of working with Apple and Steve Jobs back when Steve still wore flip-flops to the office. In addition, he had the opportunity to work with Tim Cook before Tim became CEO of Apple. Gary was also heavily pursued by Microsoft after solving a Microsoft-related problem while working for a different company. He chose a different path instead of Microsoft but has a fascinating back-story on his conversations with Bill Gates.