Team Member Profile

Professional Biography

Cathy Schlifer is Carlson Capital Management’s Salesforce System Architect. In this role, she is responsible for ensuring the firm’s database integrity and providing leadership and oversight on database development, enhancement, analysis, and administration to promote a high quality experience for clients and colleagues. She is also a primary report and database insight resource, and has responsibility for designing and implementing database solutions that support strategic objectives of teams across the firm.

Cathy’s professional endeavors have varied, but each chapter is marked with great depth and mastery. After receiving her Bachelor of Arts in French and English from the University of Wisconsin – La Crosse, Cathy went on to earn two master’s degrees in French from the University of Kansas, Lawrence and library and information science from Dominican University. She served as a certified French-English interpreter with the United States Immigration Court, but it was her devotion to teaching and learning, and her time as a professor of French and later library and information science that sparked her future in data and Salesforce administration. For the last 18 years, Cathy has held data-driven positions of increasing responsibility, leveraging her experience to enhance her credentials as a Salesforce Certified Administrator (CSA) and Certified Professional Project Manager (CPPM). She joins CCM having most recently supported senior leadership teams at a global investment banking firm and a large integrated communications corporation as a Salesforce administrator.

While Cathy’s retirement dreams include owning goats in a village in southern France, she’s happy to call CCM her professional home and fill her life with animals and farming through volunteer endeavors with Animal Humane Society and Three Rivers Park District’s Gale Woods Farm. She lives in Eden Prairie, Minnesota, with her 17-year-old Siamese cat, Belle, enjoys hiking, bird watching, jigsaw puzzles, playing cards, and spending time with friends.

Personal Thoughts

When I was a child, my mother told me that I could do anything I wanted. I don’t think she really meant “anything,” but that is the way I took it, so with each little fork in the road, I have reinvented myself to take on new responsibilities and to master new skills. That mindset has brought me great blessings, both personally and professionally. Especially in the last 10 years, I have become more and more aware of the great gifts that have been bestowed upon me. I am a firm believer in the thought that to whom much is given, much is also asked.

It became clear to me as I was interviewing with CCM, that here was a company that sees things the same way that I do. With wealth (whether it is monetary or spiritual), there is an expectation to give back, to pay it forward. I see this in the way my colleagues treat each other, in the Founders’ Mentality we are all encouraged to adopt, in the giving back to the community that is encouraged of us both implicitly and explicitly. I feel as if I have been led here for a reason, and I intend to manifest that in every way I can to support my colleagues and our clients.