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La Macchia Group LLC
President
Key Contacts
Owners, Principals & Senior Executives
Ben La Macchia's Bio
As Vice President of Planning and Real Estate, Ben serves as the in-house real estate expert and site development coordinator. Ben obtained his degree in Finance, Investment and Banking from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and subsequently worked as a trader for some of the nation’s leading commodity trading firms. His wealth of knowledge in finance coupled with his background as a trader has enabled him to act as a reliable analyst and powerful negotiator in the procurement of real estate. Ben understands the business specific needs of financial institutions and applies this throughout the entire procurement process. He has the know-how and experience to bring the right opportunities to the client, but more importantly he works with the client as he guides them through the process step by step.
Ben enjoys spending his free time exploring the outdoors with his wife and two sons. He also loves working on his old house, reading, and snowmobiling.
Kevin Mineard's Bio
Kevin Mineard, our Chief Financial Officer, is a mover and shaker within the financial industry, with over 15 years of finance and accounting experience. He has successfully driven transformative functional and technological advances within his past roles that have greatly impacted profitability and cost performance, productivity, scalability, decision support and process. Kevin’s leadership has supported complex initiatives and bridging people within companies, processes, and systems ranging in all sizes of business.
Kevin's role at La Macchia Group provides not only our internal team financial leadership and direction, but supports the financial goals of our clients. Through his diligent planning, forecasting and analytical processes, his advanced knowledge in finances rounds out our dynamic leadership team.
Mark Sikora's Bio
As Vice President of Construction and Safety, Mark has over 35 years of experience in managing and supervising major projects. Mark assists the project managers, superintendents, clients and other staff with his knowledge of scheduling, budgeting and cost estimates, while maintaining project quality, timing and customer satisfaction. After spending 14 years as a General Field Superintendent and Service Division Manager for another general contractor, Mark developed the decision-making skills which have earned him the respect of our most demanding clients. Mark has achieved an impeccable record as Safety Director by consistently exceeding OSHA standards. He has implemented procedures and standards in an effort to maintain La Macchia Group's high safety standards and oversees estimates, field inspections and safety site visits on a regular basis. Mark's clients are confident that the job will be done right, on time and completed with the highest quality, while maintaining customer satisfaction.
Mark enjoys spending time with his five granddaughters, golfing, reading or hopping in the car and taking a road trip with his wife for the day. He also occasionally finds time to get some fishing in, which usually includes taking one of those little granddaughters along.
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Mary Lou La Macchia's Bio
As Executive Vice President and Co-Founder of La Macchia Group, Mary Lou is a CPA with more than 30 years of experience in the field of accounting, financial operations, financial planning, management and consulting services. During her career she has supported businesses by evaluating internal accounting and fiscal reporting systems and applies best practices to improve information flow. Prior to founding La Macchia Group, Mary Lou worked as a CFO and Vice President of two successful financial institutions. She has been in our clients’ shoes and knows what they expect before, during and after project completion. This industry-specific experience has allowed her to become highly respected in the eyes of our clients and makes them feel confident they are working with a company that understands their businesses. Mary Lou leads by example with a high level of integrity and dedication that is felt by each and every employee and client.
Mary Lou’s greatest joy is being with her husband, Ralph, and spending time with their family. She says being grandparents is the BEST! A few of her other interests are: traveling, raising awareness of financial literacy with an online tool through Money Mission™ and supporting the local community shelters/missions.
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Ralph La Macchia's Bio
As President and Co-Founder of La Macchia Group, Ralph created a business model focusing solely on financial institutions. Throughout the past 30 years, Ralph has supervised, planned, designed and managed construction projects of varied scopes, budgets and sizes, he remains actively involved with the day-to-day operation of La Macchia Group. One thing that has remained consistent throughout each and every project is his integrity. This is the first word clients’ associate with him. Leading by example, Ralph inspires and brings out the best in each team member. His dedication, knowledge and experience are part of each and every project, which allows our clients to feel confident they are receiving the highest level of service. He has developed lasting relationships, which is another reason why we have a long list of repeat customers.
Ralph’s interests are history, cars, the outdoors, snowmobiling and spending time with his grandchildren. He especially enjoys taking his grandchildren to car events and shows.
Tom Kennedy's Bio
As Chief Operating Officer, Tom works with clients to achieve maximum results and to ensure the highest degree of quality from project to project. He realizes each project has unique challenges and develops solutions that work both internally and directly with clients to guarantee the best possible result. With degrees in Structural Engineering from Marquette University (Bachelor and Master) combined with his numerous years of experience working in the United States as well as Europe and Mexico, his knowledge of design/build allows him to fully apply the La Macchia Group process from multiple perspectives.
Tom has been married for over 25 years and has three children. He enjoys music, including building and collecting guitars, is an avid skier and a nerd for all things tech. As a true Wisconsinite, he is a huge Packers fan and an even bigger Marquette Basketball fan (Go Marquette!)
Operations
Danielle Havlicek's Bio
As Director of Design Strategy, Danielle delivers 15 years of interdisciplinary design experience, focusing on the financial industry. After receiving a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Industrial Design from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Danielle worked for a top retail design firm, delivering solutions for many top-tier brands in automotive, retail, and financial. That experience led her to a design consultancy that focused primarily on delivering branded experiences for Community Banks and Credit Unions. She has gained valuable experience in architectural and interior design, environmental graphic design, branding and name generation, and project management, encouraging collaboration with a multi-disciplinary team. Her successes include designing ITM technology into a large branch network, to designing microbranches in Supermarkets, to the relocation and renovation of a 130,000 square-foot new headquarters building. While at La Macchia Group, Danielle leads projects from concept inception through completion, ensuring high-quality solutions and high-end service. Through it all, she enjoys focusing on building relationships with her clients and partnering to develop strategic branded experiences for the future of banking.
Josh Schoenemann's Bio
For the past 14 years, Josh has worked exclusively within the financial industry gaining valuable knowledge that has allowed him to truly understand the needs of specialty buildings like banks and credit unions. As Director of Design, he oversees quality control of projects to facilitate an adaptable plan of delivery and building schedule. Josh uses a critical eye on every project making sure every detail in a building is meeting and exceeding La Macchia Group's clients expectations. Josh works closely with the design team to challenge design, logic and be a consultant to the needs of a project. From pre-design due diligence through constructability, Josh acts as a soundboard for all design decisions to ensure they are meeting the needs of the client.
Mathew Bratzke's Bio
Matt serves as La Macchia Group’s Director of Construction, bringing over 25 years of experience with him. He will oversee the project management team in all aspects of construction from conceptual estimates through project closeouts. His experience in the industry has given him the knowledge and skills to effectively understand the complexities of construction, scheduling, procurement, and contract negotiations. During his time in the industry Matt has managed construction projects ranging from storefront retail spaces to 950,000 square foot suburban office campuses. Matt graduated from the Milwaukee School of Engineering with a B.S. degree in Architectural Engineering and is LEED AP accredited. In his free time, he enjoys spending time with his family, playing golf, and riding his motorcycle as often as he can.
Mike Ehrlich's Bio
Mike brings to the table over 22 years of experience working ona wide variety of design, build and construction projects. Ranging from small space remodels to build-outs to brand new facilities, Mike’s diverse experience gives him an advantage by understanding projects from an analytical perspective which generates creative solutions for clients. Mike leads the quality control of our construction document outputs to ensure the final building meets code and client standards. He works with his team to develop a thorough building program, identify client objectives and finds solutions that not only are custom to the client, but incorporate modern financial technology into their spaces.
Tim Klatt's Bio
With over 13 years of experience in geographical market analysis and an educational background in geography, Tim’s combination of skills allows him to successfully provide detailed, data-driven results to clients. Tim has developed large scale deployment strategies for national and regional retail, restaurant and financial clients and has experience working throughout the United States, Canada and Mexico. As Director of Planning Services, Tim has completed over 100 market studies with successful results for clients showing them where and how they should be positioned to increase customership, shares and PFI relationships. Strategic planning if often challenging and with Tim at the helm guiding financial institutions, he makes sure they have the right resources in the right location at the right time. The market research Tim provides is an objective analysis that delves deeply into who the financial institution is at its core, who the customer base is and how they want to be served. Using the analysis, we partner with clients to develop a comprehensive strategic plan for the future success of the organization.
Business Development, Marketing & Sales
Chris Frain's Bio
As Senior Director of Business Development, Chris delivers over 30 years of business experience and strategic solutions to LaMacchia Group clients. After receiving a Bachelors of Business Administration with a concentration in Finance from the University of Georgia, Chris worked in commercial real estate assembling land tracts for commercial development throughout Georgia. That experience led him to Chicago working with Shaw Industries to launch a new brand and product category with architectural/design firms, corporate facilities managers and commercial dealers. Following that success, Chris transitioned to the design-build industry partnering with a custom-home builder and then transitioning to the commercial field with two firms dealing exclusively with financial institutions. During this time, Chris gained invaluable financial institution-specific experience in the disciplines of branding, strategic facilities planning studies and demographic analyses, real estate consulting and acquisition, and the design-build process with clients throughout the U.S. Two of Chris’ significant financial projects were a 70,000 s.f. renovation/expansion and a 90,000 s.f. new main office. He works diligently with clients addressing their goals and objectives to implement strategies that meet financial, facility and branding objectives.
In his free time Chris enjoys golf, baseball, music and hiking. However, the things he loves most are spending time with his wife of almost 30 years and their nine children as well as doing volunteer work for their Church.
Dave Throndson's Bio
As Vice President of Business Development, Dave combines over 20 years of technical sales and construction industry experience to help clients solve problems. After receiving a degree in biochemistry from the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire, Dave combined his sales expertise and analytical problem solving skills to bring his customers solutions to a variety of quality, environmental and safety issues. He has experience leading customers through projects that range from 1,500 square foot office build-outs to 50,000 square foot new main offices. As the point of contact for the project, he leads clients through the planning stages to assess their challenges and develop a strategic plan. He then helps organize the right team to guide them through the design-build process. As both the representative of La Macchia Group and the point of contact for the client, Dave’s experience in demographic study and facility deployment strategies brings an educated perspective to address client needs. The client’s perspective is Dave’s perspective; he is the client’s partner throughout the project process.
Dave enjoys spending time outdoors fishing and golfing, however most important is the time spent with his wife and family.
David Welsh's Bio
As Senior Director of Business Development, David’s experience stems from over 20 years working within the financial industry. His experience has made him an expert in the latest trends in financial operations including technology, branch efficiencies, and custom branded experiences. David has worked on projects ranging from 500 square feet to as large as 115,000 square feet, allowing him to navigate the financial industry and offer solutions to his clients based on their specific needs. His expertise is one that financials can trust and count on to help guide them through a facility project.
Mark Milligan's Bio
As Director of Business Development – Southwest, Mark brings a wealth of experience in the financial industry to the southwest region, where he has spent the last 20 years helping clients achieve long-term success. During his career, he has supported clients with strategic development and consultation on branch transformations and consumer transaction solutions. Mark believes that it’s the relationship that determines the response, and works closely with each and every one of his clients to develop a long-term strategy that fits their unique challenges and needs.
Mark is involved with a men’s group at his home church, Community Bible Church, in San Antonio, Texas. He currently serves on the Board of Directors and is Vice President of the non-profit Judson Youth Sports Foundation, and volunteers with other area charities and non-profit organizations in San Antonio. Mark enjoys golf, spending time with his wife, daughter, and two sons; and anything related to The University of Texas Longhorns athletics—“hook em!”