Kathy Hartzler

Manager

TRADITIONAL BIO

Kathy has been dedicated to solving problems and creating strategic opportunities for more than a decade. She specializes in taking a macroscopic view of financial management, operational processes, contracts, technology, and people in order to analyze operating and capital budgets to meet the highest level of excellence and to make a positive financial impact. The culmination of Kathy’s combined years in finance and business operations enable her to help her clients improve their financial health, build their company cultures to energize employees and customers, and streamline their various company processes to generate tangible results.

Prior to joining Thought Ensemble, Kathy worked as a Senior Accounting Project Coordinator at NGL Energy Partners LP where she performed a digital transformation from on premise EBS to Oracle Cloud. She was also Senior Vice President of Finance at Jet Linx Aviation. Kathy has a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science with a Finance minor from Metropolitan State University of Denver. Kathy is also the Treasurer of Agile Denver, Inc. and volunteers as a mentor for high school girls in south metro Denver.

Along with work, Kathy enjoys spending time with her husband, dog, adult son, and daughter. She can usually be found paddle boarding, biking, walking the local trails, or playing pickleball.

Introverted, Intuition, Thinking, Judging (INTJ)

THOUGHTFUL BIO

A few years back, I was introduced to John Elkington’s “triple bottom line,” an accounting framework that immediately resonated with me on a deeper level as it looks at business accounting through three lenses that are of great personal importance to me: social, environmental, and financial. The triple bottom line is a way for companies to generate tangible results by energizing their employees and customers while maintaining a commitment to corporate social and financial responsibilities.

Throughout my career I have focused heavily on finance, as well as on building trusted relationships with my peers, all while hiking the trails of Colorado in my free time, so I found the triple bottom line to be an exciting way to connect these important concepts in my life: people, profit, and the planet.

My love of the environment started when I was a young child. Growing up in Southern California, we enjoyed many sunshine and fresh air-filled road trips up to the Redwoods, as well as to Colorado to visit family, and even all the way to Iowa!

But my passion truly took off as a teenager when we officially moved to Colorado. My mom felt that as part of our move, we really needed to take in Colorado, and become connected with it in a deeper way. So, one of the first things we did was take a 10-day, 110-mile hike through the Weminuche Wilderness in the San Juan National Forest. It was an incredible (and exhausting) 10 days of some of the most beautiful nature I had ever seen. Clear skies, fresh water, and no trash or contamination. It really made an impression on me. It made me realize that we cannot live without the environment and my appreciation for nature was forever changed. I have continued camping and hiking ever since.

My love for finance came a little later when I attended MSU Denver. My focus at the time was on political science — I really wanted to become an attorney thanks to a legal battle I was in when I was 19 to maintain control of a promotional calendar business my friend and I had started (a story for another time). Toward the end of my degree, I was working full time doing reverse mergers at a boutique investment firm called Inverness Investments Inc. I had no idea how much I would end up enjoying the finance side of business, but I did! So, with the time I had remaining in my BA, I decided to add a minor in finance.

After graduation, I married my husband Rick, and we started to build our family, so I decided to skip law school and instead continue working for Inverness part-time from home. I really loved helping build profits that could then be used to take care of everyone in the company, while simultaneously taking care of my own family.

I continued working for Inverness until my kids were old enough to not need me at home all the time, at which point I went to Jet Linx, a private jet travel solutions company, in order to grow in my career. I started in business operations, but soon recognized that my finance skills were needed! So, I became the SVP of finance and managed 30 pilots, restructured the cash to finance process, managed the aircraft maintenance department, built and repaired revenue streams, helped improve customer experience operations, provided contract negotiation for multiple types of contracts, and did some re-engineering in order to find the most efficient processes.

Toward the end of my time as SVP, I recognized that our departments were siloed, so I hired a consultant to help us get aligned. She was incredibly helpful, and the experience got me interested in the Agile process, so I followed that interest and moved to NGL Energy Partners so that I could be a part of their Oracle software transformation. After participating in the project for 3 years, I knew I wanted to become a consultant, and that’s when I found Thought Ensemble.

At Thought Ensemble I get to really focus on the people aspect of the triple bottom line. Every project we do seeks to connect people in a way that creates better solutions. I’m just getting started, but I can’t wait to continue to bring my passion for people, finance, and the environment to every project I work on!