The Elite Advisors are successful business owners that have already achieved 7-figure businesses or have world-class expertise in a unique topic. They provide feedback, support, and resources to you, the advisory board member, to help accelerate and sustain your business growth.
The Founding 12 Elite Advisors were handed picked by The Founder to join The CEO Elite in our beginnings to help accelerate the initial boards. They are truly driven to advise small business how to become more successful and I know their expertise and willingness to provide the knowledge and connections needed will make a significant difference in your business.
Barb Stuhlemmer
Systems, Process, & Product Development for Strategic Growth Planning

International Speaker, Author, Leader of Entrepreneurs, TV Personality, College Instructor and Advisory Chair for The School of Entrepreneurship, Barb Stuhlemmer has been featured on Rogers TV, The Huronia Times, Professional Organizers National Conference, “Passion, Purpose and Profit” Conference, “Speak, and Impact and Influence” Conference, interviewed for an article in Canadian Business Magazine, the Start Something Show, the Prospect Profiler, Social Buzz Club, Speaker Stardom TV, and has had articles in Accelerate Magazine, The Opinions Post, The Hub Inc., Online Marketing Success, and others. Barb is a Master Business Strategist who works to strengthen the courage of 6-figure business owners to take extraordinary action and reach the million or multi-million dollar income. With her background in the sciences and a life-long affinity to small business Barb now elevates the belief system of successful entrepreneurs to ensure they reach their biggest goals that will change their life and often the world.
Chris Adams
Marketing and Start up Advice
Chris is gShift’s co-founder and CTO. He is fully committed to building a world class content marketing software platform, along with inspiring an awesome engineering and product team. Chris loves when all aspects of great software design converge to produce an unparalleled user experience.
Chris’ philosophy is that great engineering and product teams are built on talent and agility, and that truly listening and understanding the needs of each gShift user and partner is crucial to success. These beliefs are core to the success of Chris’ previous start-ups, including Hot Banana Software, a web content management system, and cgk Technologies, an Internet marketing and development company.
When Chris is not at gShift, he is a dedicated father, sailboat racer, cultural supporter, punk rock member of the band Sonic Coalition and has been a Barrie Film Festival Board Member for the past nine years. He is passionate about contributing to the community, by helping to build a sense of place within the City of Barrie.
Cindy Ashton
Presentation & Communications Skills Trainer
Canadian born, Cindy Ashton is a Presentation & Communications Skills Trainer and professional speaker with almost 20 years experience. Considered to be in the top 10% in her field, as vetted by the US government and on a work visa of extraordinary ability, she is an expert in presentation skills, speaking voice, body language, content delivery and leadership presence. She has received awards from both President Obama & the Queen of England for her lifetime of volunteerism and has appeared in multiple media including on the front page of the lifestyle section of the Times, Metro News and Investment News.
Graduating on the Dean’s list, Cindy holds an Honours Bachelor’s degree in Music and Kinesiology (specialization Relaxation Therapy) from York University and has studied with Randolph Academy for the Performing Arts, Second City, Royal Conservatory of Music and Livent of Canada.
As a former educational consultant and two-time nationally published in this field, Cindy is the master at drawing out relevant content from her clients and showing them how to deliver it powerfully in sales conversations, on stage, in the boardroom, on the phone and beyond.
Cindy has performed numerous times on stage, in recordings and on film including playing the lead role of “Miss Hannigan” in Annie, singing opera arias for the Downsview Symphony and making audiences laugh as a company member of R9 Comedy Troupe. She draws from this experience to elevate her client’s influence power and activate them to present with the confidence, magnetism and storytelling ability that are usually only reserved for entertainers.
Bringing a vivacious and unstoppable spirit to every audience, Cindy has toured across North America giving thousands of keynote speeches, training and seminars in a variety of sectors from education to corporate to wellness to small business. She has spoken at the University of Toronto, Princess Margaret Hospital, Orange Coast College, Toronto Entrepreneurs Conference, MetLife and many more.
Patti Pokorchak
Million Dollar Sales Coach
Patti Pokorchak is an award winning marketing and sales executive, with 30+years of experience at IBM, Siemens, and many start-up companies in North America and Europe. As a serial entrepreneur of 10 businesses since 1992, she helped start and run a 7-figure 20-employee software company for 10 years before opening a thriving garden centre and hobby farm just outside of Ottawa, Canada.
Patti was NOT a born salesperson. She was a shy introverted programmer who stumbled into sales as a way of escaping corporate life. Making six-figures by the time she was 25, she decided that there had to be more to life than climbing the corporate ladder. Wanting to live a life with no regrets, she left Toronto for a year of travel in Europe and returned 9 years later to Ottawa. Finally, after a 30-year detour, she returned to her hometown of Toronto.
Patti says “If I can be a farmer, then you can be anything you want to be — with some basic sales and marketing skills that is.” She loves to you’re your passion into profit with her proven practical advice.
Beatrice Johnston
Brand Strategist

Director of Business Development & Marketing at Brand Excitement, a marketing company that has become warriors with a special talent at selling the untouchable (services) and making the invisible in demand
Beatrice Johnston has 20 years of experience creating and supporting the brand experience. She has beat the odds and raised the stakes numerous times in life and business and now champions her clients to do the same. She hones strategy, design and coding skills, making her the prime candidate to manage brand launches, rebrands and enterprise-level campaign strategies. Brand reputation, visibility, and education are her forte.
Jackie Ramler
Executive Wealth Advisor – Portfolio Manager

“Corporate Owners and Executives have many important decisions to make. Qualified financial advice can not only save you money and taxes, but also provide you with peace of mind for moving forward.” – Jackie Ramler
What Jackie does for her clients:
- Collects and organizes your financial information
- Educates and simplifies complex financial issues
- Creates a roadmap to lay out the financial priorities for business and family
- Provides solutions and options to maximize corporate and family wealth
- Tracks your performance in attaining your goals
- Aligns investment strategy with personal principles – environmental, social and corporate governance
JACKIE RAMLER is a dedicated leader in the financial industry with more than 20 years of experience. She focuses on comprehensive wealth management solutions for business owners, corporate executives, and their family.
Jackie works to align your portfolio with your principles and priorities, while maintaining profitability. Jackie helps ensure your portfolio reflects the future you want to support. Screening for your principles, such as:
- workforce diversity
- reduced carbon footprint
- product safety and sustainability
Jackie and her team are active participants in the community. All team members are encouraged to serve their community and have the benefit of a paid volunteer day each month. Jackie is committed to volunteer work and charity organizations, such as Rainbows Canada, Tay Libraries, and Living Green Barrie.
Dana Pharant
Master Healer and Life Strategist

You need to be the leader in your business, you need to own that space, you need to become the dominatrix in your business.
Dana is a former dominatrix and she can tell you it’s not about being a hard ass or confrontational. That’s masculine energy where you take yourself seriously and you push, push, push to make change.
Dominatrix energy is feminine energy—a totally different kind of power. You simply stand and state your position. You don’t try to justify it; you don’t second-guess yourself.
Like the ninja warrior, you are fully present, aware of everything that’s going on. You’re not hyper vigilant waiting for the next attack, so you’re able to move and shift whenever you need to.
You stop pushing and start to follow that amazing intuitive skill that women have to the nth degree. And you know the precise moment when you need to implement.
When you step into your dominatrix energy and surrender into the present moment, you can see the bigger picture and scout out what needs to be done. And that will take your business to an entirely new level of success. You’ll be a superstar, handling everything with ease!
Bruce Joseph
Millionaire Investment Strategist
Focusing on the money in your business and “How to keep it once you make it.”
Bruce Joseph is the President of Anthem Mortgage Group, a full service brokerage focused on using real estate as an asset to build wealth. He is a passionate speaker at industry events and outspoken about creating stronger financial literacy awareness amongst Canadians as well as greater transparency regarding lending practices of Financial Institutions. Bruce also holds workshops and seminars focused on teaching the fundamentals of wealth building. Bruce attended the University of Western Ontario and achieved his undergrad degree in Economics. Bruce greatest passion is dissolving false financial beliefs and focuses in clarifying the seemingly complicated in a simple effective way everyone can understand.
Paul Attia
Strategic Decision Making & Family Business

As a Criminal Prosecutor for 10 years, Paul brings a very unique approach to advising. A natural-born leader and ‘question asker’, Paul brings out the best version of people by challenging the way they think. Paul’s gift is his capacity to distill complex problems to their core issues and then work towards a sustainable solution grounded in real world principles.
In addition to being a trial lawyer, Paul is also an entrepreneur, and the business manager of several landscaping stone quarries, founded by his immigrant father. Paul understands the complexities and nuances of family business and the challenges and rewards it presents. He’s live to the issues at play, the high stakes on the line and critical importance to the right process in addition to the achieving the right result.
A two-sport varsity athlete while in law school, an avid athlete today, a husband and a father of four, Paul has always pushed the limits of productivity and daily progeny, and his strong belief is that life success must come in the overflow of success in your family life, in your fitness life and then into your financial life.
Paul is a speaker and writer, covering topics such as strategic decision making, family business and the overlapping principles of success found in family, fitness, and finance. He resides in Toronto and blogs at www.PapaAlpha.ca
Gigi Blair

Executive Coach
As a Certified Coach, Gigi Blair’s passion is helping busy professionals create space in their lives to increase clarity, focus and productivity. The end result is that her clients make decisions and move forward with confidence, grace and agility.
Born and raised in Texas, Gigi counts two professional experiences as life changing. First, working in healthcare management at The University of Texas Southwestern Medical School allowed her to see the human spirit triumph over adversity day after day. Second, as a management consultant preparing companies for business solution implementations, she saw the challenges people face while creating and sustaining change. These experiences confirmed her call to coaching and led her to create her company How You Live, Lead and Look…Because How you are Remembered, Matters.
Gigi’s formal academics include a Bachelor of Arts from Baylor University, a Master of Arts from Southern Methodist University, the Certified Coach designation via the International Association of Coaching and a two-year Fellowship with the CS Lewis Institute. www.gigiblair.com
Coming Soon – Founding Elite Advisors
Spiritual and Life Empowerment Coach – Found – watch for the announcement of this advisor
Executive Wealth Advisor – Found – watch for the announcement of this advisor