The Sleekstone Team
Our team leaders are experienced senior consultants who are recognized for their ingenuity, creativity, and leadership in their fields. Their biographies are shown below, listed alphabetically by function:
Branding:
Ray Baird
Ray Baird is known for creating extraordinary business and brand strategies that transform business and improve financial value. Baird’s experience with leading companies through change and brand adoption has earned him a place in BtoB Magazine’s “Who’s Who in B-to-B.” He has also been recognized for helping companies grow into new areas, creating new categories, and restructuring businesses looking to grow. Ray is a champion in guiding companies towards a course of vision creation, strategic planning, brand creation and development, and integrated marketing.
With brand experience of over 20 years in creating and developing such brands, Ray has helped companies such as American Airlines, Maglite, Toyota, Panda Express, Sony, Toshiba, Cisco, Sharp, Pegasystems, Edwards Lifescience, FileNet, and Entergy. Ray often contributes his thoughts on all things business and brand strategy at: www.CMO.com & www.GigaBrandBlog.com
Brent Scarcliff
Brent is in the forefront of the move to redefine branding as the commercial expression of culture. His areas of
expertise include brand strategy, corporate identity, social science-based research, creative services, and organization development. Brent’s clients range from the major motion picture, television and video game studios to the Global 500 to emerging start-ups. He has an MBA from Loyola Marymount University and is a dissertation shy of a Ph.D. in Linguistics and Mythology. In his spare time, he enjoys writing and travel.
Compensation/Rewards:
Steve Mendelsohn
Steve, through his years as a nationally recognized compensation consultant, has observed the need for alignment between a company’s leadership style, talent management systems, culture, and brand. This led him to co-found Sleekstone and be a lead architect of the Workplace Branding concept. He has long been an advocate of having strategic compensation systems that are aligned with an organization’s objectives and implementation tactics. He led the practices of two of the largest international HR consulting firms and expressed his entrepreneurial spirit in creating his own firm over 15 years ago. Steve’s clients have ranged from Fortune 100 companies to private equity backed startup firms in a broad array of industries and geographic areas. Steve’s goal in consulting has been to create clarity, fit, and agreement between the company’s strategies and the way it rewards people. With Sleekstone, his goal will broaden to ensure that there is alignment between the human resource management systems, culture, and the brand promise to optimize engagement and performance.
Development – Strategy:
Barry Thomas
Barry’s organization development consulting experience has focused on system-wide leadership, effectiveness of human interactions and alignment of planning, organization structure and management systems to support the development of a high performance workforce, where all employees are engaged in achieving the aims of the organization. His experience base is leading projects in “Fortune 500” companies across major industries over the last 35 years.
His consulting is based on the philosophy that systematic investments in human assets will lead to incremental financial returns. He partners with senior leadership and interested parties in selected organizations to facilitate development and alignment of the management system in context of an organization’s business strategy, management culture, employee characteristics, and desired brand image.
Financial Planning:
Rick Weiss
Rick Weiss is recognized in the financial services industry for his dedication and experience in creating financial strategies for individuals and business clients. His goal and commitment is to create value for his clients through quality service and professional knowledge.
Rick has been recognized numerous times by financial institutions. His role at Sleekstone is to provide financial planning services. Rick balances risk vs. the desired return in working with clients.
Health & Welfare Benefits:
John Garner
John is literally “the guy who wrote the book.” As the author of the Health Insurance Answer Book, he is one of the
most respected benefit consultants in the country. For many years John has advised employers of the need for alignment between a company’s mission and vision, its human resources philosophy, and benefits strategy. This led him to co-found Sleekstone and be a leading originator of the Workplace Branding concept. He has been a consultant for over 30 years. John’s clients have ranged from Fortune 100 companies to small employers in a variety of industries all over the country. With Sleekstone, his goal is to is to help employers align their employee benefit plans and communications with the organization’s culture to optimize employee commitment, health, and productivity.
Operations – Marketing & HR:
Georgi Johnson
Georgi is a strategic organization development leader with over twenty years international hi-tech, pharmaceutical,
and semiconductor management experience. She has worked in a broad range of areas, including corporate marketing, business development, sales, chief technology office, engineering, information technology, human resources, and change management with a focus on executives and strategic partnerships. Georgi has direct experience working with the Americas, Europe, Japan, and Asia-Pacific regions with proven track record of managing effective business relationships at the executive levels. She is a Senior Consultant to Sleekstone who will apply her knowledge to all of the above mentioned areas with an emphasis on Marketing and HR operations. She is also an experienced mentor and coach for talented individuals who have been identified as high potential for executive positions. She is a catalyst, with a solid reputation for integrity in business development, leading change, contract negotiations, and developing marketing strategies and operations to support your company’s business goals. Georgi has a flair for innovative and forward thinking that will help merge human resource management systems and the brand promise as one.
Organization Assessment & Culture:
Jasmin Loi
Jasmin Loi recently joined the Sleekstone Consulting group, bringing 12 years of specialized Human Resources 
experience. She graduated with a Master of Science degree in Industrial and Organizational Psychology from California State University, San Bernardino in 2001. She has broad experience, including recruiting & selection, employee relations, classification & compensation, and testing. She has developed an organization wide internet-based Assessment Center from the ground up. She has also incorporated successfully the un-proctored testing solution in 2006. Jasmin and a partner developed an online system to easily determine an organization’s workplace culture using an innovative assessment tool. The assessment tool provides benchmarks for organizational culture.
Retirement Benefits:
Don Absey
Don Absey has over 35 years of experience in the qualified benefits field—designing, installing, and administering 
hundreds of defined benefit and defined contribution plans. He was an officer and shareholder in his own actuarial and consulting firm for over 20 years, and is now Sleekstone’s practice leader for its Retirement Practice. In this role, Don will assure that the retirement plans fit the companies culture and brand image.
Don has taught retirement courses at several leading universities. He is a member of the American Academy of Actuaries and an Enrolled Actuary. He is a Past President and a Life Member of the Western Pension & Benefits Conference.
Talent Management & Leadership Development:
Ron Komers
Ron Komers is one of the leading public sector innovators in Talent Management and Leadership Systems. His other
areas of expertise include Branding, Health and Welfare, Performance Management, Succession Planning and HR systems integration.
An accomplished and inspirational speaker, Ron is often asked to talk to HR professionals and executives on innovative HR practices and the importance of HR to organizational success in a challenging world. Ron has worked as a Consultant domestically and internationally. Much of his practical experience comes as an Assistant CEO for a large Public Sector agency. Ron has been honored numerous times by National and Statewide organizations for the innovative concepts he has developed and implemented.