Our philosophy is simple: business needs drive HR practices

Adam M. Ochstein

Founder & CEO
Adam has over 15 years of Senior Management experience in the areas of Sales and Marketing. Prior to forming StratEx, Adam held senior management positions with Frontier Communications, Teleglobe Communications, Digital Commerce and various other software startups. He has been successful building sales forces, leading turnaround efforts in struggling companies and creating sales and marketing strategies. Additionally, he has designed numerous compensation plans, customized trainings and business plans. His industry experiences range from telecommunications, software, business process outsourcing, hospitality and professional services. In his last position at iCore Advisory Services, he helped build a sales and marketing consulting practice. His clients' industries varied from engineering software to biometrics systems. He holds a Bachelors of Arts in Political Science and European History from the University of Maryland.

Sami Abualsamid, Ph.D.

President & COO
Dr. Sami Abualsamid earned three graduate degrees from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He holds several patents and is published over sixty times in scientific journals, conferences, industry publications and book chapters. He is listed in Who's Who in Science and Technology and was awarded the Advanced Researcher distinction by the US government for his research in super computing and real-time systems.  Over the period of two decades Sami has led the development of several enterprise class scalable applications that are currently in use by many Fortune 500 companies and thousands of users across the country.  Sami routinely contributes to the Open Source Community and the hundreds of open source projects he worked on are in use all over the globe.
Sami can be reached at: sami@stratexpartners.com or (312) 252-7336.

Catherine LeFloch, PHR

Director of Client Services
Catherine joined StratEx over 5 years ago as an Account Executive. After showing great success in driving sales, she was quickly tasked with additionally managing a select group of strategic accounts. She has been instrumental in aiding our growth from a fledgling startup to a thriving business entity. In her current role, she is responsible for the direction and growth of our Human Resources Account Management and Account Specialist Teams. Catherine holds a BA in Human Development & Human Resources from Boston College.

Brian Bevel

Director of Accounting and Payroll Operations
Brian joined StratEx more than four years ago as an accounting manager and has since led the payroll tax department and implemented our industry standard tax software, MasterTax.  His previous experience as a financial analyst in the mutual fund industry supplied him with a strong background in large scale reconciliation for multi-billion dollar funds.  Brian has leveraged his accounting and finance background along with his payroll and tax experience at StratEx to help design and implement system features as well as automate payroll operations.  His role also includes internal audit of system and process controls and he works in conjunction with Blackman Kallick to uphold SAS 70 standards.  He holds a BA’s in accounting and finance from Ohio University and is currently in the process of acquiring his masters in finance.

Kristen Zagozdon, SPHR

Director of HR Consulting Services & Director of Software Development
Kristen joined StratEx after a successful run of over four years at Lettuce Entertain You Enterprises. She is responsible for delivering Strategic HR Services to the StratEx clientele by working closely with our team of HR Account Managers. She is also charged with building out a standalone consulting practice which delivers high-end HR Services to companies in the greater Chicagoland market.
Her core strengths are in areas of HR Compliance, Training & Development and Benefits. Kristen manages the development of our flagship software eStratEx. She holds a Bachelors of Science with a specialization in Human Resources from the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana.

Stephen Fedor, PMP

Director of Partners Relations
Stephen has over 14 years of institutional relationship and IS project management experience. Stephen spent 11 years with Morningstar successfully managing web-based client implementations and large SDLC IS projects.  Stephen holds a BS in Consumer Affairs from The Ohio State University, an MBA with a concentration in Leadership and Change Management from DePaul University.  Stephen also earned his PMP certification from the Project Management Institute in May of 2007.