Strategic Planning

SageRiver Adds New Consultant
SageRiver Adds New Consultant 2024 2560 SageRiver Consulting LLC

Mitchell (Mitch) Heinzeroth joined SageRiver last year as a consultant. With years of executive-level retail experience, he knows how to bridge the gap between strategy and operations. He also knows what it feels like to hang upside down on a rope more than 700 feet in the air. We sat down with Mitch this month to talk about what he learned at Target Corp.’s top-performing store, his passion for leading teams and his excitement about joining SageRiver.

SageRiver (SR): Tell me about the role you have at SageRiver. What is your focus?

Answer: I joined SageRiver last year, and my first engagement was with the Family Intercultural Resource Center (FIRC) in Summit County. They retained SageRiver to provide strategic planning services to help them address rising food and housing costs for residents. Stakeholder engagement was an important part of the project because FIRC wanted to develop transformative strategies and partnerships to solve complex, systemic challenges. I interviewed and conducted numerous focus groups with a range of stakeholders, and we synthesized and reported those findings as the foundation for our strategic planning work. SageRiver has always been at the forefront of new thinking and methodologies, and, with my unique background, I bring additional diversity to the team. My hope is to contribute fresh insights and approaches to delivering top-notch work to our clients.

SR: You bring retail leadership experience to SageRiver. Over your six years with the Target Corp., what were your standout experiences or achievements?

A: I was very lucky to work at the No. 1 store in the country for five of the six years I was with Target. It was a massive operation that employed anywhere from 300 to 450 team members at a time, depending on the season. There are accomplishments I am proud of but never expected, such as becoming a district subject matter expert in reverse logistics. My fulfillment role also gave me the opportunity to build a business that grew from just under $3 million to almost $13 million in three years.
Most of all, however, I learned about building teams and developing people. It’s something that gives me joy. Retail operations employ people from all walks of life and every educational and experience level. It’s a fast-paced business, and you need to connect with people quickly, understand what motivates them and create a team environment that encourages everyone to push for success. It’s challenging but fun.

Working for Target also helped me become a better problem-solver. Nothing works as quickly as retail. The challenges you’re presented with every day need immediate remedy. I learned to look at problems from a bird’s-eye view so I could see immediate solutions, but also pursue longer-term fixes within systems over time.

SR: You worked for Target Corp. during the pandemic. How did you lead your team through that experience?

It was difficult. As a large corporation and retailer, Target had responsibility for millions of employees and guests. The government considered us an essential business, so we stayed open throughout the pandemic. The corporation provided policies and procedures that we then implemented in our stores, but we also had to understand the fears and individual circumstances of our team members and guests. Especially at the beginning, most employees and guests were afraid of the unknown—of what it meant to get sick—and didn’t want to step within 10 feet of someone else, but they still needed an income, work, or the essentials to live during lockdown. As an executive team lead, my role was to make adjustments to the extent I could, consider their individual feelings and concerns but still run the business. I tried to always stay positive for the team and keep us moving forward.

SR: What excites or interests you most about your new role at SageRiver?

A: It’s exciting to be asked to strategize the future with an organization. Many of SageRiver’s clients are nonprofit or government organizations, and they make a huge difference in their communities. I’m VERY excited to be part of enlarging their impact even further. The leaders we’re engaging are invested in the process of change and in looking deeply at systems and opportunities for transformation. We’re building change with them, and that’s exciting.

SR: What is your philosophy of customer or client service?

A: In retail, I learned that treating everyone with genuine respect, honesty and a welcoming attitude is critical. Kindness also goes a long way. Those lessons apply to consulting as well, but I’d add that engaging people in envisioning and working toward a better future is also key. That’s what SageRiver is known for—and it’s how we help organizations transform and grow. We’re hired to help make an impact—and it needs to be an impact our clients embrace and own.

SR: What do you enjoy outside of work?

A: I’ve got a wonderful fiancé and two dogs, and any time I can spend with them and my family and friends is time well spent. I’m also a Broncos fan, which has been rough over the past few years. I also love riding my Peloton, and I ran the Colfax Half Marathon this spring. I’ve taken up golf as well, and I compete in fantasy football.

SR: What’s something about you that people might not know?

A: I bungee-jumped off one of the top 10 “legal” bungee jumps in the world (Bloukrans Bridge in Tsitsikamma, South Africa). I’m also an avid Garmin watch user. In my lifetime of wearing it, I have 32 million steps—or 16,337 miles—tracked on Garmin.

Ball Corporation Drives Progress Toward Real Circularity
Ball Corporation Drives Progress Toward Real Circularity 2560 1707 SageRiver Consulting LLC

In our “Stories from the Field” series, SageRiver sits down with senior leaders who are transforming their organizations for tomorrow. Our latest conversation is with Ball Corporation’s Mike Schaarschmidt, senior director of supply chain. As a leading supplier of aluminum packaging for beverage, household and personal care customers, Ball is focused on helping the world move toward a truly circular economy, where materials can be used again and again. Recently, Ball accepted a unique opportunity to further its mission by partnering with young strategists to market a more sustainable solution to plastic cups. The collaboration helped Ball double brand awareness and optimized an online sales distribution channel to drive increases of the new product sales.

It wasn’t how Mike Schaarschmidt expected to begin his new job at Ball Corporation.

“The day I started was the day we decided we were going to pivot,” he recalls. “It was June 2020, at the height of the pandemic, right when everyone realized that social distancing would last more than a few weeks.”

As the new supply chain leader, Schaarschmidt was part of a team charged with launching a breakthrough product via retail, online and foodservice channels. Called the Ball Aluminum Cup®, the product was infinitely recyclable and promised to significantly reduce plastic use and landfill waste.

Initial market research showed that the product tended to “sell itself forward,” meaning consumers would recommend it to friends and family once they’d experienced it themselves. With those findings in mind, Ball developed a launch strategy aimed at driving consumer sales through word-of-mouth marketing and social media virality. The strategy would center on sales to large venues—such as sports stadiums and concert venues—supported by advertising and celebrity-endorsed social media content.

But COVID restrictions threw a wrench in those plans, forcing the company to focus instead on retail sales through large distributors and stores such as CVS and Target. The Ball Aluminum Cup® found early success among older, more affluent consumers and larger businesses. But, the product hadn’t gained traction among younger consumers or smaller businesses and restaurants.

Enlisting New Strategists for Fresh Insights

Just as Ball was developing the next phase of its strategy, Schaarschmidt received an unexpected call from Susan Heinzeroth, founder of SageRiver Consulting and an adjunct faculty member at the CU School of Business. Heinzeroth had been inspired by Ball’s new infinitely recyclable product and suggested that a partnership with her strategy class might benefit Ball, as well as her students.

Schaarschmidt liked the idea—and his colleagues agreed.

After briefing the students on their existing marketing strategy and results, the Ball Corporation team identified four marketing strategy goals:

1. Grow overall awareness of the new brand
2. Educate consumers about the benefits of the product (i.e., that it was more than just a disposable cup)
3. Drive trial via a more expansive push into the foodservice market (especially restaurants)
4. Reach younger generations via a push into organic and paid social media

Four teams of student strategists were formed to focus on younger consumers or small businesses. With coaching from Heinzeroth, the teams conducted interviews, focus groups and surveys to understand the perceptions, needs and values of those audiences and then presented their recommendations to Ball.

Going Viral Via Lifestyle Content

The first teams targeted consumers in their late twenties to early forties. These consumers valued sustainable products and could afford a slightly higher price point than the red plastic cups they were accustomed to purchasing. These consumers were especially active on Tik-Tok and Instagram, and they liked engaging with content from social influencers and friends who shared their values and interests. Word-of-mouth marketing was an effective strategy with this group, and they liked the way the Ball Aluminum Cup® kept drinks cold in a sturdy container.

One challenge emerged with this audience, however. Younger consumers didn’t know much about Ball or understand the tagline that was being used for the product—Infinitely Recyclable. While this disconnect made them question the truth of the message, it also opened the door to educating consumers about Ball’s longstanding commitment to sustainability and the promise of aluminum, which can literally be recycled again and again without degrading.

“Most people don’t realize it, but 75 percent of all the aluminum that has been mined globally is still in circulation,” Schaarschmidt said.

The student team recommended that Ball create behind-the-scenes videos showing how the cups are made and recycled and share that content on social media. They also encouraged Ball to shift toward more authentic and timely content by giving influencers contractable freedom to jump on trending topics around sustainable products and integrate the Ball Aluminum Cup® into other activities and content. These messages, which would leverage Ball’s Colorado roots as part of an informal, outdoors-oriented culture, would position the Ball Aluminum Cup® as a lifestyle brand that was better for the environment.

Building New Avenues for Personalized, Convenient Sales

The other student teams focused on small, independent operators, including restaurants, breweries and bars, as well as corporate, wedding and catering services. While these audiences had diverse needs, they all wanted an easier way to purchase Ball’s product in smaller quantities, since they don’t order in bulk through large distributors. The students recommended that Ball establish an online store through Amazon, offer the cups in different sizes and drive small businesses to the Amazon store through search engine optimization and sponsored ads.

Most small operators also wanted the ability to personalize the Ball Aluminum Cup® with their own business or event logos. The students recommended that Ball leverage relationships with third-party vendors to explore labeling options for small quantity purchases. This would allow Ball to service the market without investing significantly in limited-run printing.

Telling a Larger Story

Ball has already implemented several of the students’ recommendations—and seen big results. Brand awareness has doubled from 20 to 40 percent, and the Ball Aluminum Cup® can now be purchased in multiple sizes through an online Amazon site that has significantly increased sales. Thanks to rising demand, Ball is now selling its cups through 35,000 retail stores and has gained distribution in 60 percent of retail chains as well.

Just as importantly, working with the students has reinforced how the Ball Aluminum Cup® can help the company tell a larger story.

“Every aspect of Ball—from aerospace to cups to cans—is truly about sustainability and the sustainable benefits of aluminum,” Schaarschmidt said. “When the students presented their recommendations, they told us what they learned about the product and about recycling in the United States. We need to take the whole country through the same journey.”

Luckily, Ball will have help from a passionate new group of brand ambassadors.

“It was rewarding to work with a company to help solve a real problem,” said Emilie Waggoner, who participated in the project before graduating. “I still talk about this project a year later, and now, my coworkers bring me Ball Aluminum Cups® because they know I love them so much!”

Becoming Mindful: Unlocking Innovation by Awakening to the Present
Becoming Mindful: Unlocking Innovation by Awakening to the Present 800 533 SageRiver Consulting LLC

During a yoga session one day, my instructor encouraged us to “take an inversion of your choice.” These upside-down poses increase flexibility and circulation and allow us to view the world from different angles. She returned to the idea with a parting question.

mindfulness-yoga

“Where do you have opportunities to welcome new perspectives?” she asked.

It’s a question I pose in my strategy work with clients. Some organizations struggle to execute their strategies because of embedded aspects of their cultures. They may focus on the “way things have been done,” think in top-down terms or instinctively move away from unfamiliar ideas.

Mindfulness can help us shift to generative ways of thinking and experiencing situations.

Stopwatch at 90 Seconds

Mindfulness is a tool I employ with clients at all levels. It’s especially important for leaders, as it supports their focus and stress management. Leaders live demanding lives, and they need tools to help them stay grounded and awake to new possibilities.

Mindfulness works by helping us create space between a stimulus and our response. Research shows that an initial feeling lasts for about 90 seconds. The impact depends on the meaning we assign to our feelings and the resulting decisions we make.

Through a daily mindfulness practice, we can learn to focus our attention on the thoughts, feelings and sensations we are experiencing in the present moment. As thoughts enter our minds, we simply observe them, allow them to move through our consciousness, consider them, honor them and let them go. As we detach and observe, we open ourselves to curiosity and learning, rather than judgment.

Positive Contagions

A mindfulness practice also helps leaders set a positive tone for their organizations. As researchers from Harvard Medical School and the University of California at San Diego have demonstrated, people “catch” positive or negative emotions from others. That means a reactive leader can produce anxious, rigid teams. Conversely, open leaders can help their teams interact in more inclusive, collaborative and creative ways.

work-mindfulness-leadershipAt SageRiver, we harness the power of mindfulness in team strategy, as well as executive coaching, sessions. We often begin our sessions with a mindfulness exercise to help participants let go of whatever stresses or demands they experienced that day. By grounding them in the moment and encouraging them to observe, welcome and honor thoughts and feelings, we set the tone for the work to come.

This simple practice pays dividends for the team. As we map their strategic landscapes and illuminate possibilities, we welcome divergent ideas without judgment. We listen with curiosity, seeking first to understand, and then consider what that contribution can add to our thinking.

This curiosity-driven approach creates space for everyone to contribute to and embrace the widest range of potential solutions. As we sift through ideas, we find new connections and possibilities, which create opportunities for innovation and break-through thinking.

Kiss the Earth

mindfulness-practices-walking

It takes practice to become mindful, and I consider myself a student learning alongside my clients. Day by day, however, I see the benefits in my own work and life and enjoy watching others experience greater focus, creativity and calm as they begin their own mindfulness practices.

You can start today by trying this mindfulness exercise:

  • Find a place where you can take a quiet walk (where you can also practice social distancing)
  • Take a moment to stand in place and focus on your breath
  • Notice the rise of your chest and expansion of your abdomen
  • Feel the passage of air as you inhale and exhale
  • Begin walking as though your feet are kissing the earth
  • Notice how the ground feels against your toes and heels
  • Describe the trees, grass, skies and birds (facts not judgment)
  • Connect with your senses and fully experience your surroundings
  • If thoughts intrude simply observe, allow, consider, honor and let them go

After you’ve spent a few minutes walking, stop and take note of how you feel. Repeat this practice every day for a week and notice the difference in your focus and ability to manage stress.

Then, contact us to take the next step in bringing the power of mindfulness to your team and your strategic planning process.

A Consulting Project on Finding Joy and Purpose in Retirement
A Consulting Project on Finding Joy and Purpose in Retirement 1700 994 SageRiver Consulting LLC

CU Denver students conducted high-level research for Jackson National Life in a strategy lab course

Each semester a group of CU Denver Business School MBA students are given the rare opportunity to collaborate with a company from Colorado for course credit. Through the business strategy lab, students consult with a company on a strategic issue they’re facing and learn how to conduct research, synthesize their research into strategic recommendations, work with executives while gaining both strategy and consulting experience.

The Business Strategy Lab course is taught by Susan Heinzeroth, she’s a CU Denver Business School alumna and owner of SageRiver Consulting, a strategy consulting firm.

This semester a group of MBA students were given two challenge statements and conducted research that was presented to one of America’s largest annuity companies, Jackson National Life.

What is the business strategy lab?

Business strategy lab is a course that helps students gain hands-on experience with strategy, consulting, and client relationship management. Teams design and execute projects based on the strategic challenges they are given from the client. Students work to problem-solve, conduct research, analyze information, and create a deliverable to present at their final client reception.

Heinzeroth has been teaching the business strategy lab course for five years. As an active professional who does consulting and strategical work at her own firm, she provides her students with skills and knowledge they need to succeed in their consulting project.

Every semester, Heinzeroth invites experts to talk and advise students on strategic thinking and how to conduct research. For example, this semester a senior manager from Accenture, a management consulting company, came in to share his expertise and knowledge on strategical thinking and the consulting process to prepare students for their upcoming research project.

Jumping into the research of joy

Jackson National Life’s mission was to identify when pre-retirees were both financially ready to retire and to understand how to help them step into retirement with a purpose. The company gave the MBA students two specific challenges:

  1. Identify how retirees find their purpose
  2. Research what makes retirees joyful and happy

Students collected research in various ways including surveys and one-on-one interviews. One event they hosted called Purpose Pathways allowed students to interview pre-retirement participants on their perspectives about on purpose and joy.

As the students conducted the interviews, they offered activities such as Jenga, the operation game, and hopscotch. Meanwhile, they would also pull participants aside to ask them about joy and purpose. The goal of this event was to find out whether pre-retirees should start finding their purpose and joy earlier in life.

One activity involved jumping into a children’s pool with rain boots. Participants were asked if they remembered the last time they’ve done anything childlike. Several admitted they couldn’t remember. The ‘act your age’ stigma is one stigma many adults fall into, and that isn’t always a good thing. It can hold people back from experiencing the simple joys of life, things like splashing through puddles on a rainy day.

A successful collaboration

“The knowledge and experience gained is really beneficial. It’s amazing to see the collaboration between Jackson National, the students, and our professor,” shared Austin Garza, a Professional MBA student specializing in business strategy.

“The knowledge and experience gained is really beneficial. It’s amazing to see the collaboration between Jackson National, the students, and our professor” – Austin Garza

At the end of the semester, the students gathered their research into a final presentation for the company. The presentation included actionable recommendations that Jackson National Life could integrate and utilize.

This isn’t the first time Jackson National has given a project to CU Denver students. The company has implemented several recommendations from past presentations, so they know the valuable insight student consultants can bring.

Education is more than memorization

Today’s jobs require strategic thinking, creative problem-solving skills, emotional intelligence, and effective communication. Heinzeroth and her course encourage hands-on learning experiences focused in all of those areas. She believes education should not be about memorizing and regurgitating; instead it’s about “bringing what you’re learning to life.”

Originally Heinzeroth taught at CU Boulder before she came to the CU Denver Business School. Her motivation behind teaching is to provide students real world ‘labs’ for stretching and testing their skills. Her philosophy is to flip the thought of ‘learning in order to work’ to ‘working in order to learn.’

“Experiential learning goes above and beyond the traditional education process. It becomes an expertise that students can take into the work place” – Susan Heinzeroth

“Experiential learning goes above and beyond the traditional education process. It becomes an expertise that students can take into the work place,” Heinzeroth said.

Heinzeroth looks forward to continue teaching the strategy lab course, engaging wholeheartedly with the next-generation-leaders-and-thinkers and doing what she loves the most.

She shared, “Strategy is my love. It’s my purpose and brings me joy.”

View on CU Business News

Eating the Elephant: A Bite-by-Bite Approach to Evolving Your Organizational Design
Eating the Elephant: A Bite-by-Bite Approach to Evolving Your Organizational Design 622 415 SageRiver Consulting LLC

Your board of directors has selected a new leader for your organization. Smart and dynamic, the leader sends a jolt of energy through the company.

A few months later, a memo arrives announcing an organizational redesign.

The goals aren’t well defined, but you’re determined to support the change. Your employees, customers and vendors express frustration and ask why the change is happening. You aren’t sure, but you respond as well as you can to move everyone forward in an uncertain direction.

If this scenario sounds familiar, you’re not alone. More than 75 percent of organizational redesigns fail to deliver the intended results, a 2015 McKinsey report showed. Redesigns can lift performance, but they require time, energy and collective will to succeed. When organizations beat the odds, it’s usually because they’ve thought holistically and engaged their team through a full change management process. In short, successful organizations embrace the adage, “You have to go slow to go fast.”

Begin with the End in Mind

As the rate of change accelerates, many organizations are rethinking their designs to help them move faster. One size doesn’t fit all, but the trend is toward flatter, more decentralized organizations that adopt a “team of teams” approach. This type of design can deliver greater speed, innovation and agility by allowing interdisciplinary teams to form and reform in response to organizational needs.

If speed is the desired outcome, then why approach organizational redesigns at a more deliberate pace? Because a redesign involves more than just moving boxes on an organizational chart. In fact, changing your structure may be the final step you take after you assess how the building blocks of your company, which include your people, systems, processes, technology and more, help you execute your strategy. The way you fit those components together is what we mean by organizational design.

Time in the Trenches

At SageRiver, we review your design as one factor in the strategy process. Before recommending changes, we collaborate with you to explore points of light and pain within the organization. For example, we look for efficiency gains, innovation centers and leadership approaches that improve performance. We also consider resource constraints, process gaps and misalignments that hamper your team.

By digging deep and listening carefully, we discover whether evolving your organizational design will help you to realize your strategic vision.

This process involves engaging leaders, employees and stakeholders from all facets of your organization. In addition to asking for their insights, we’re gauging how ready they are for change, using the ADKAR model developed by Jeff Hiatt at Prosci. In the early stages, we assess whether your team sees the need for change. Later, we evaluate what information, tools, training and reinforcement they need to make the desired changes.

Bite by Bite

Although organizations are often tempted to jump right into restructuring their organizations, redesigns work best if you tackle other elements first. For example, if you plan to transition to a flexible team-based structure, it’s important to ask questions such as:

  • Have your employees fully understood and embraced your vision, mission and values?
  • What steps could you take to help your leaders be effective guides, facilitators and coaches, rather than top-down managers?
  • How would you describe your culture in terms of your approach to developing employees? Is feedback offered continually at all levels of your organization and welcomed as an opportunity for growth?
  • What internal tools, structures and coaching resources can you offer to facilitate effective collaboration?
  • How do you share individual and team goals and track progress in achieving them? (Transparent accountability is key to helping teams understand how responsibilities and activities align.)
  • What mechanisms do you have in place to evaluate, reward and advance employees within a flexible team(s) environment?

As you consider those questions and more, you’ll understand how much foundational work a successful redesign requires.

It’s the rare organization that can “eat the elephant” all at once. Successful organizations eat the elephant bite by bite through a series of small snacks.

Welcome Back, Kotter

If this process rings a bell, it’s because it draws on the stages outlined in John Kotter’s change model. One of his key insights was that change must be approached as a shared journey toward a compelling future.

As you begin your journey, it’s important to start with manageable pilot efforts, which you can test, refine and retest before implementing them across the organization. The reason for this is simple: Broadscale change involves big risks and can spark mistrust and resistance if it fails. By focusing first on smaller changes that deliver value, you can invite input from your team as you go and engage them in creating an organization that works for everyone. As you celebrate wins along the way and work together to make improvements, you’ll build trust and ownership and create an accelerating snowball of change. (Kotter’s See-Feel-Change framework, which he outlines with co-author Dan Cohen in their book, “The Heart of Change: Real-Life Stories of How People Change Their Organizations,” describes why this approach is so effective.)

Evolution Revolution

This approach to organizational redesign is a far cry from the old way, in which leaders huddled with a few people and then imposed a new structure on the organization. That top-down approach matched the top-down structures that characterized an earlier economy.

In the workplace of the future, which demands greater speed, agility, engagement and innovation, the process must fit the type of organization you hope to create. If your vision is of an organization that evolves constantly to meet the changing demands of the marketplace, then you must take a revolutionary approach to change by inviting your team to help design your future.

To find out more about SageRiver’s strategy development and organizational design services, contact us today.

CU Denver Today: MBA Students Rub Shoulders with CEO of Swiss Company for Strategy Lab Course
CU Denver Today: MBA Students Rub Shoulders with CEO of Swiss Company for Strategy Lab Course 1200 500 SageRiver Consulting LLC

CU Denver Today: MBA Students Rub Shoulders with CEO of Swiss Company for Strategy Lab Course

Students in the MBA program have the option to take a Strategy Lab course, led by a seasoned strategy consultant and ’88 MBA alumna, Susan Heinzeroth. The course revolves around one consulting project for a client-company.  It emphasizes dual-track learning of both strategic planning, and consulting as a profession.  This semester, students are working on an e-commerce strategy for Similasan, a new company client for the course. Similasan is a Swiss company with a 35-year history of manufacturing homeopathic products.  Their hope, as a result of this Strategy Lab course, is to capture a larger market share here in the United States.

Facetime with the CEO and other C-level executives

Through their work, students are granted direct access to Similasan’s CEO, Urs Lehmann. This unique opportunity to interact directly with the top level is rarely offered in MBA programs across the country.

Urs Lehman, CEO of Similasan and former World Ski Champion, understands the importance of academia, leading to the collaboration with the CU Denver Business School. He visited Similasan’s US headquarters in late September and will meet directly with students to address questions and provide insight into the company.

In previous Strategy Lab projects, executives at Jackson National, a financial services firm, worked closely with students and have since included elements of that work directly into their overall marketing strategy, enhancing their focus on the end-consumer experience and changing the narrative around retirement to “Retire on Purpose.”

Snagging a new international company as a client

This semester, students will be devising a strategy to grow Similasan’s market share, build their e-commerce, and increase their US brand recognition. Similasan has been very successful in bringing up the US market and now sees the growth potential, especially as digital-grocery becomes more evolved.

“We took three teams, gave them three separate areas of e-commerce business strategy to focus on, and allowed them to interact directly with Similasan.” -Susan Heinzeroth

Students worked on consumer profile analysis, general market research, case studies, and potential influencers and partnerships for future e-commerce strategy formulation.

The unconventional class structure provides a seminar style, discussion, and research-oriented approach, and has students excited. What also makes it unique is it is meant to provide interaction between students and senior business executives. Both the companies involved and students benefit from their time together.

Alumna turned lecturer provides expertise and insight

Similasan came to the Business School through the instructor of the course, Susan Heinzeroth. Founder of SageRiver Consulting, Heinzeroth has built a successful strategy consulting practice focused on helping organizations achieve strategic growth and transformation.

But that’s not the only hat she wears.

Heinzeroth is also a CU Denver Business School alumna and dedicated lecturer. Along with her 30+ years of business experience, she also pulls from her MBA degree to advise students in the course. She’s been instructing students in the CU system since 2002, teaching at Leeds School of Business and now at the CU Denver Business School.

Heinzeroth teaches for a meaning because of the life-meaning it offers and the influence it has on the next generation of organizational leaders.  She seeks to ready those in her Strategy Lab course with new and transformative skills for their “real world” business lives. She built the Strategy Lab course so students could directly interact with the business community. Students find it to be a just-in-time learning process, enriched with contemporary issues that goes beyond what any internship offers. From past years, this course has translated into students gaining new employment, switching careers, and shifting focus into their desired industries.  Not to mention, the new connections they collect by working with their client.

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