Team Overview

Leadership Team 

President - Lisa Taylor,

Prior to 2009, Lisa managed Hewlett-Packard’s technical consulting organization in Canada, held various strategic regional and global roles within HP and was a Senior Consultant with Deloitte & Touche.  In her last role at HP, Lisa managed a workforce of over 120 consultants and noticed common themes in career and performance discussions with her staff and managers. Lisa had uncovered an opportunity to leverage her successful career in strategic consulting and corporate management and focus on her passion for employee engagement and career satisfaction.  Stepping away from corporate life, she created a unique organization within Canada’s career management landscape, Challenge Factory. 

Challenge Factory combines the latest demographic-based research with innovative career management practice. It works with “successful, but not satisfied” professionals of all ages and provides highly experiential and practical programs for individuals and organizations. Challenge Factory and its clients have been profiled in the Vancouver Sun, Calgary Herald, Brandon Sun, Toronto Sun, HR Reporter, Ottawa Sun, Herald Chronicle, 24Hrs, Canadian Press, Womens Post and Company Magazine.

Lisa holds an MBA in Strategic Management from the Schulich School of Business, York University.  She currently sits on several not-for-profit boards and is an active community volunteer and public speaker. Lisa has addressed over 400 organizations in Canada, the US and aboard and is a regular careers columnist in Womens Post and other publications across Canada. 

 Career Coach - Michael Ehling,

Affiliate Coach Michael Ehling is a professional coach who sees everyone as a force for good in the world. Mike helps people like you create a compelling vision and story of the change or big goal they want to create in the world and enroll others into making it happen. Clients appreciate his ability to quickly understand them, their careers, and their business-or-career challenges. They also appreciate his ability to help them put helpful insights to immediate, practical use. Mike holds a B. S. in Operations Research and Industrial Engineering from Cornell University. He spent 12 years in technology consulting, sales, and marketing. Michael is currently the Chief Success Officer at Balance Coaching. He is a graduate of the corporate coaching program at Coach Inc. and has been coaching since 1999. He is a certified expert in the use of several business, career, and leadership assessment tools. Mike is a frequent teacher, speaker, writer, reader, and singer. Originally from Burlington, Vermont, Mike lives in Toronto with his wife and two sons.

Contact Mike at mike@challengefactory.ca

Career Coach - Ahalya Kumaran,

 Ahalya has worked as a Career Coach for over 5 years.  She primarily coaches ambitious 20- and 30-somethings, often new grads and/or emerging leaders, drawing on her leadership and career consulting experience with a wide range of individual leaders and teams from the C-suite to the frontline.  Ahalya is passionate about unleashing and maximizing the potential of others through focus and deliberate action.   Ahalya’s natural tendency and desire to bring out the best in others helps her clients find challenge and meaning in every coaching conversation. 

Ahalya is known for facilitating engaging coaching conversations, asking powerful questions and offering key insights on priority issues and actions.  Ahalya’s key strengths include coaching for high performance through awareness and understanding, creating a development plan this is meaningful and exciting for the individual, and adapting to the needs of the individual while maintaining a certain rigour that is required for results. 

Ahalya combines the breadth of her professional, personal and educational experiences to serve her coaching clients.  She has extensive experience working with senior management teams on strategic planning and facilitation, leadership development, team effectiveness, and employee engagement. Ahalya joined one of Canada’s leading human capital consulting firms during its infancy, experiencing firsthand the challenges and opportunities of leading through growth and change where she led a high-profile cross-functional team.  She also worked at two global consulting firms and understands how large, complex organizations work. Additionally, Ahalya is often requested to speak on time management, goal setting, and other personal development skills, often drawing on her experiences teaching and performing violin in the South Indian classical tradition, travelling, and volunteering with not-for-profit children’s organizations growing leaders in Toronto.  

Resume Strategist and Job Search Coach - Karen Siwak, 

Karen Siwak is an award-winning resume strategist and certified job search coach who works with executives, senior managers and credentialed professionals across North America to market themselves for their next career move. An enthusiastic listener with an knack for asking the right questions,  Karen uses a highly interactive process to help people identify their unique value proposition, and create marketing messages that speak to the buying motivators of hiring managers. She then coaches clients on a job search strategy to target organizations that are most in need of her client’s expertise.

With a background in strategic planning, a degree in IT and Communications, and a practitioner’s diploma in psychotherapy, Karen’s professional path has been anything but direct. Over the course of her career she project managed the conception of ServiceOntario, developed strategic policy for transportation planning, worked as a senior consultant with one of the busiest resume firms in Canada, and launched her own company, Resume Confidential. In her spare time, she project managed the design and construction of her family home north of Toronto, where she lives with her husband and two children. Karen has a first-hand understanding of the joys and challenges of career transition, and channels her fearlessness, enthusiasm and understanding of job search best practices to give her clients an edge in one of the most complex hiring markets in recent history.

Entrepreneur Advisor - Elizabeth Verwey,

Elizabeth Verwey is a seasoned entrepreneur who helps small business owners manage their space and time more effectively so they can enjoy both life and work. 

Since establishing Small Office Mentors in 1997, she has helped over one thousand clients in the Greater Toronto Area to gain perspective on their challenges and priorities, and take concrete action to improve how they organize and operate their businesses day to day.

Corporations have their executive teams, boards of directors, consultants and staff.  Entrepreneurs too often have only one person to turn to: themselves. As market cycles continue to compress and accelerate, the challenges can become overwhelming.

Elizabeth steps in to change that situation. She has a mountain of ideas to share from her work with entrepreneurs in diverse industries, plus 20 years’ experience in facilitating groups, and a proven record of innovative solutions. Through one-on-one consultations, plus workshops and seminars, she helps people clarify their priorities, identify quick wins, map out action steps, and follow through on their plans. Her book, The Mentors Circle^tm is an informative guide to help others form business growth groups.

This warm and dynamic presenter has hands-on experience in retail management, education, charities and juggling work and family.  She has completed the Personnel and Industrial Relations Program at University of Toronto and the Life Skills Coaches Training Certificate at the YWCA.  She is a long time professional member of the Canadian Association of Professional Speakers. She is currently the President of Small Office Mentors.

Community and Client Service Manager - Candice Pascal van Alphen, 

 “A passion for people” best describes Candice’s approach to her professional life which has its roots in education and training. Early in her career, Candice soon found her true love - facilitating professional and personal development seminars with all levels of staff and management in the corporate and industrial sectors. Her most recent position as Vice-President of Training and Employee Development at Grade Learning provided her with the opportunity to deepen this love for professional and personal development by implementing and overseeing Grade Learning’s personalized training initiatives for each staff member across the province. “Nothing is more satisfying to me than to journey with individuals who are exploring ways to stretch and grow themselves both professionally and personally”, says Candice. It was, therefore, a natural fit when exploring the opportunity to join the Challenge Factory team where she is able to interact with and support both clients and experts during their association with the company.

No stranger to transition herself, Candice is originally from Johannesburg, South Africa, emigrating to Canada in 2002 and currently living in Toronto with her husband and two children.

Contact Candice at candice@challengefactory.ca