Leadership Team

Our core leadership team is comprised of four highly-experienced individuals: Rochelle Blease, Denise Fandel, Joyce Klute, and Chuck McFall. While family is the bond that drew everyone together, they share a passion for imparting their knowledge and expertise to anyone who could benefit.

Rochelle Blease

Executive Chairperson

Rochelle is passionate about unlocking growth for small and medium size businesses and non-profits. She is a global business growth executive with more than 30 years of experience in numerous markets; financial services, medical device manufacturing, information systems. Whether working with non-profits, start-ups or Fortune 100 companies, Rochelle brings a unique combination of energy and expertise in strategic planning, corporate development, acquisitions, financial analysis, marketing and communications, and market intelligence. 

Prior to founding Breakthrough Growth, Rochelle spent 24 years at Wolters Kluwer, a global information technology and services company. As Senior Vice President of both Strategy & Business Development and Corporate Marketing & Communications, she led strategic planning, business development and acquisition efforts to accelerate growth and quadrupled the size of the company’s Financial Services software and services portfolio to more than $600 million. 

Rochelle also served as Vice President of both Strategy and Corporate Marketing & Communications for Wolters Kluwer’s Governance, Risk & Compliance division. She was responsible for strategic and business development planning, as well corporate marketing, branding, and internal and external communications for the $1.2B division that served global legal and financial services markets.

Before joining Wolters Kluwer, Rochelle was an attorney in private practice with a focus on commercial and real estate litigation, and bankruptcy, representing financial institutions. 

She holds a Juris Doctorate, magna cum laude, from California Western School of Law, and a Bachelor of Science from North Dakota State University. Rochelle is also a licensed attorney with the State Bars of California and Minnesota. And she has completed a Finance certificate with the Harvard Business School’s Executive Education program. 

Denise Fandel
President and CEO

Denise is a leader and builder of strong, people-centric organizations. Her work is founded on a core belief that the rich experiences and passions of board members can, through the work of their organizations, change people’s lives for the better. 

Denise has extensive experience working with boards of directors whose members include leaders of educational institutions, CEOS of national and international professional societies, healthcare executives, and governmental and community leaders. With over 35 years of experience, Denise excels at knitting together coalitions and alliances, building foundations of trust and respect among groups with sometimes conflicting viewpoints. 

Denise is a recognized leader in the certification industry having served as chair of both the Institute for Credentialing Excellence (ICE) board as well as National Commission for Certifying agencies, the accreditation arm of ICE. 

Denise was the founding executive of the Board of Certification’s national headquarters. The BOC is a national organization with the only accredited certification program for athletic trainers in the United States and over 50,000 certified athletic trainers. Under her leadership of 22 years, the organization grew, developed and gained the respect of the entire athletic training community.

Denise has earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Physical Education with an emphasis in Athletic Training from St. Cloud State University in Minnesota; a Master’s degree in Exercise Physiology from the University of Nebraska at Omaha; and an MBA in Business from the University of Phoenix. She is also a Certified Association Executive and Certified Conversational Intelligence Coach.

Joyce Klute
Chief Operating Officer

Joyce brings over 40 years of experience working with software systems in large enterprises, as well as working in audit and compliance. Analytical, detailed and resourceful, she is adept in simplifying the most complex processes.

Joyce is someone who cares not only about the work she does, but the people she works for and with. Skilled in leading and training individuals, Joyce has experience transforming them into coordinated units. Her expertise in helping organizations achieve breakthrough results is unmatched. 

An expert in data processing, technology change management, software training and process documentation, Joyce has decades of experience helping organizations successfully launch new applications and updated versions of existing ones. She has also helped analyze, design and facilitate the implementation of more effective and efficient enterprise-level best practices and standard operating procedures, which have resulted in reduced systems downtime and organizational savings of millions of dollars.

Prior to joining Breakthrough Growth, Joyce held data analytics and technology leadership roles with First Data Corporation, Resource Support Associates, and Centel Corporation. At First Data Corporation, she won the organization’s Presidential Collaboration Award in addition to 12 other awards for operational efficiency, teamwork and productivity. 

Joyce has also volunteered for and held leadership and mentoring positions with organizations such as the YMCA’s Big Brothers and Big Sisters programs, Meals on Wheels, and First Data Corporation’s fundraising committee to help needy families over the holidays.

Joyce earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Education from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

Chuck McFall
Senior Consulting Partner and Chief Marketing Officer

Chuck is a nationally recognized marketing professional and business strategy expert with more than 30 years of experience as a marketing executive, entrepreneur, and CEO of his own marketing consulting firm.

He has worked with clients of all sizes across multiple industries. He has consulted with, coached, and trained more than 10,000 executives and senior leaders in over 50 companies--from start-ups to Fortune 500 companies—working all over the world. His focus is new product development, business planning, product / market management and development of more competitive marketing strategies and plans.

An entrepreneur at heart, Chuck has also owned and managed two successful businesses, where he leveraged his years of experience as a brand management executive with General Mills, one of the world’s leading marketing companies. He has also served as adjunct professor of marketing in the MBA program at the University of St. Thomas in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

His education includes a B.A. degree in Psychology from DePauw University and an MBA from Indiana University