The Weklar Consulting Group is a team of highly experienced professionals spanning the breadth of business, marketing, communications and operations.  The team includes:

 

Diane Weklar

Adrienne Katz

Steve Netter

Kara Wagner

 

Diane Weklar

 

Diane is President of The Weklar Consulting Group. With a unique combination of corporate and consulting experience, Diane’s forte is as a business strategist who synchronizes strategic goals with all organizational functions – management, marketing, finance, IT, R&D, sales, operations, product/service development and delivery to exceed stated goals. 

Diane is adept at identifying and pursuing aggressive growth opportunities in both economically strong and weak markets.  She is also skilled at harmonizing

traditional and new media strategies to accelerate growth. Her experience spans a variety of markets including advocacy, business services, energy, financial, government, healthcare, legal, non-profit and technology.

A seasoned entrepreneur with six successful start-ups to her name, Diane excels at turning ideas into successful companies. In addition to consulting to a broad base of established companies, Diane’s background includes launching ventures which provide eGovernment solutions to local government entities, a web-based portal providing recruitment services to businesses, an advocacy group providing large energy users a voice in developing issues addressing the market rules for electricity, as well as, co-founding the first company to provide corporate marketing and management tools to the legal industry.

Diane has an MBA in Finance and Marketing and a B.A. in Economics.   She has lectured extensively and wrote numerous articles for organizations including the American Bar Association, American Marketing Association, ASEE, IEEE, and the Professional Services Marketing Association. In addition to holding a Board position with Business Resource Connection, she is Programming Chair for the American Marketing Association-Inland Empire.

 

Adrienne Katz

 

With a 30 year career, Adrienne experience spans academia, consulting, professional services and is a lifelong civic activist working with numerous trade/professional groups and non-profit organizations.  Her areas of expertise include marketing communications and public relations.

 

As one of the nation’s first law firm marketing directors, she set the bar for high quality, innovative and professional marketing communications programs for the legal industry.  She has been a lay member of committees for The Florida Bar since 1990; the Committee on Advertising and the Committee on Unlicensed Practice of Law.

 

Adrienne has consulted to a wide variety of organizations in the corporate, business services, health care and academic arenas.  Additionally, she has taught marketing and business communication to international business executives in a specially designed intensive business school program.

A master media strategist, she has represented a broad range of clients from celebrities and authors to the media to the preparation of business executives, lawyers and accountants to deal with the media in promotional as well as crisis situations.  She has also written articles and speeches for business executives and other professionals.  An experienced events planner at the local and national levels, she spearheaded the years-long preparation for the Pope's visit to the United States and the Congressional Partnership in conjunction with the Greater Miami Chamber of Commerce.  She coordinated the effort that raised nearly a million private dollars to support the five-day event which involved every part of the business, transportation, education, medical and governmental communities.

Adrienne is a noted fundraiser for both college development programs and non-profit associations. She served as the Executive Director of the Association of Public Corporations and in the administrations of the University of Miami, Miami Community College and Florida International University.  With a unique perspective on both sides of fundraising, Adrienne has a specialty in advising businesses and professional firms on the most effective uses of their charitable efforts, community involvement and promotional programs. 

Adrienne holds an undergraduate degree from the University of Florida and a Master's degree from the University of Miami.

Steve Netter

 

A highly experienced legal and accounting professional, Steve brings more than 20 years of diverse experience in mortgage banking, accounting, finance, law and corporate environments.  His experience covers the professional services arena, banking, and regulated industries.  He has a unique expertise in compliance, consumer lending and bankruptcy regulations, along with TILA, RESPA, HMDA, BSA/AML and Privacy statutes.

 

As Vice President/Compliance Officer with JPMorgan Chase (formerly Washington Mutual), Steve created the bank’s Predatory Lending department, and led a project to overhaul and revamp policies and procedures and to convert the subprime division to a channel of the bank.  He was also selected to lead Special Projects for management review which included the Proposed and Final Board changes to Regulation Z and the Mortgage Disclosure Improvement Act.  Steve also worked for several law firms in the areas of litigation, loan documentation and bankruptcy.

 

Steve holds a B.S. in Accounting and a Juris Doctor in law.

 

 

Kara R. Wagner

 

An award winning marketing professional with 20 years experience, Kara’s expertise is in creating vision for innovative and highly successful marketing programs.  She is highly skilled in all aspects of building companies, including the full interactive service mix, branding, pricing, promotions, communications, launches, performance metrics, and customer service programs.  She also has extensive experience in designing and managing highly successful business development and sales strategies. Kara has serviced a wide variety of market segments including chemical government, health care, industrial safety, manufacturing, security, technology and transportation.

 

Kara founded the nation’s first profitable local government ecommerce website (www.civicnet.net).  The site received numerous industry awards, including Best of the Web.  She was also a founding member of a national division providing enterprise software solutions for local governments which successfully won 7 out of 9 multi-year, multi-million dollar government contracts during competitive bidding processes.

 

Proficient in technology including managing technical teams, and her internet competency includes system re-engineering, consumer-centric architectures, ecommerce, and security.  Kara has a BS in Marketing and an MBA in Marketing Management and International Studies.