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Our Team

CITEC's team of professionals brings decades of experience training thousands of employees at dozens of companies throughout the North Country. And when a challenge calls for something beyond our team's direct expertise, we're connected to a nationwide network of nearly 1,400 manufacturing and business improvement specialists — so the right resource is always within reach.

For clients, that means one local relationship backed by a much larger bench of resources, programs, and specialized partners when your project calls for them.

Steve Lockwood

Executive Director

Steve Lockwood brings his leadership experience in manufacturing and sales to connect CITEC's clients with resources to grow their businesses. He has held various positions at Camoplast/Rockland, Multina USA, General Motors and served as Director of Vocational Programs at Citizen Advocates. Steve's roles at CITEC have included business advisor, business development director, and now executive director. Steve works to connect North Country businesses with the broad range of resources and NYS assets available across the region, and develop and strengthen CITEC's programs and services to deliver comprehensive, proven solutions to fuel growth and advance manufacturing and other business in the North Country. 

315-777-0556 (cell)

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Sharon Van Auken

Business Advisor

Sharon Van Auken is CITEC Business Solutions' human resource specialist, assisting businesses with HR training, documentation and compliance. Her experience spans diverse fields including financial services, energy research, hospitality and tourism, and higher education. She has served as a corporate trainer, instructional designer and technical editor, and has held Human Resource Director positions for 13 years.

518-651-1902 (cell)

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Kate Chepeleff

Business Advisor

Kate Chepeleff is a project-progress process engineer with 30 years of progressive engineering responsibility in heavy industry and manufacturing. She is a certified Lean Green Belt and Six Sigma Black Belt with strong communication skills applied across many levels of an organization. She is recognized for her leadership on transformational team-based initiatives for operational excellence, continuous improvement expertise and as a results-driven technical leader, change agent and new equipment installation startup leader with a solid background in training program development and delivery. Her familiarity with plant environment includes corporate standards, such as OSHA, DEC, ISO, Contracting Out, Purchasing, Food Safety and Corporate Auditing roles.

Mila Peters

Accounting Director

Mila is an innovative accounting professional with more than 15 years of experience in diverse industries including banking, third party card processing, for profit and nonprofit business, and manufacturing. Her expertise is in areas of management reporting, budgeting, forecasting, internal controls, procedures, revenue recognition, variance analysis, p&l, and balance sheets.

315-742-2713 (cell)

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