Meet the Team

  Mr. Rob Phillips has over 35 years of sales, marketing, consulting, and business leadership experience with a variety of companies and organizations. His background includes business development, large account management, organizational development, and executive level relationship management. Mr. Phillips is a former vice president with Expedient, a Pittsburgh-based cloud solutions and managed service company.

Over the course of his career, Rob has worked in many diverse business environments, providing core network, custom IT infrastructure, and emerging technology services. Additionally, he co-created a content and social networking platform, where he directed product development, technology infrastructure design, brand creation, and multi-channel marketing strategies.

A graduate of Penn State University, Rob resides in Southwestern Pennsylvania with his wife Sharon, an award-winning Pittsburgh area public school district educator.

Dr. Lindsey Balderaz  is the Founding Director of the Transformative Leadership Academy, and a former Assistant Professor at the University of Texas Permian Basin in the College of Education.

She is also the co-founder of Transformative Learning Initiatives (TLI), a 501(c)(3) nonprofit whose mission is to assist education institutions in their efforts to build, grow, and sustain valuable business and community partnerships.

 In addition to co-founding Transformative Learning Initiatives, Mr. John Turcic is Founder and Principal of JGT Initiatives, a Pittsburgh-based consulting firm specializing in assisting education institution efforts to develop business/community partnerships. During his diverse 40-year career (business development, relationship management, marketing, communications, consulting, training and OD, general management, business ownership) Mr. Turcic has developed hundreds of professional relationships and partnerships across a wide variety of domestic/international business and organizational settings.

His work with front-line, middle management, and executive representatives in large companies, small firms and start-ups includes initiatives and projects in Technology, Consumer, Retail, Services, Manufacturing, and Diversified Financials. John has had in-depth business affiliations with AT&T, McDonald’s Restaurants, MCI, and any number of Fortune 1000 Companies. 

A graduate of the University of Notre Dame, John resides with his family north of Pittsburgh in Southwestern Pennsylvania.

Dr. Lauren Neal is an Assistant Professor of Educational Research at Columbus State University in the College of Education and Health Professions. 

She received her Ph.D. in Experimental Social Psychology with a minor in Statistics in 2019 from the University of Alabama. Lauren is an expert in behavioral and educational research methods, and frequently teaches graduate level courses in Statistics, Quantitative Methods, Mixed Methods, and Survey and Questionnaire Design, among others. She has been involved with Transformative Learning Initiatives since 2020 as a research consultant and board member. Her efforts with TLI include assisting with conducting a focus group with CTE leaders on response to the COVID-19 pandemic and education-business partnerships and analyzing pilot program data from initial school partnership consulting efforts.