Leadership Team
Steven Trudell, President
As President of Courtland, Mr. Trudell is responsible for executive oversight and management of all Courtland contracts.
Mr. Trudell’s career has always been focused in the Human Service Industry. Beginning with NCR Corporation as a systems engineer, Steve provided technical support to Commercial, Industrial, Medical, Educational and Government accounts. While working for NCR, Steve was instrumental in the development and support of a Child Support application used by 13 Michigan counties.
In 1990, Mr. Trudell founded Courtland Consulting and began supporting the Michigan Child Support Enforcement System (MiCSES) where he was instrumental in the design, communications, testing, support and federal certification of the state-wide application.
Since the inception of Courtland, Mr. Trudell has built a team of professionals, who are equipped with the experience and expertise in every phase of the application development lifecycle, including: analysis, design, development, testing, documentation and training, implementation, help desk support and maintenance. Under Mr. Trudell’s leadership, Courtland has built a solid reputation in the human service industry, specifically with high performance team development, federal certification and implementation of complex applications.
As a business expert in the area of project deployment, Mr. Trudell was the overall manager of both the Implementation and Training Teams for the State of New Jersey’s award-winning Child Support application (NJKIDS). He provided resources for the implementation support effort of NJKiDS and currently continues to provide resources for ongoing support, business analysis and testing in New Jersey.
Courtland is an extension of Mr. Trudell’s goal to be a proud member of the community by helping to improve the quality of life for children and families. Mr. Trudell partners with select nonprofit organizations, agencies and business partners who share the same commitment and passion to make a greater impact in local communities, promoting family-focused and nurturing parent programs that benefit the lives of children.
Mr. Trudell holds a BS degree in Computer Science from Western Michigan University.
Sharon Pizzuti, Director
Ms. Pizzuti is a Director for Courtland. In this role, she provides executive leadership and strategic planning and direction to the President as well as directing new business.
Ms. Pizzuti leads client projects involving the implementation and evaluation of programs. Most recently, Ms. Pizzuti has provided leadership to the State Court Administrative Office as the Project Manager for their grant-funded performance improvement/data sharing project. Ms. Pizzuti facilitated collaboration between the agencies, identified common goals and established building blocks for a successful project. This high-profile project utilizes the collection of data for federal performance measures that are meant to analyze Child Protective Service, Foster Care and Adoption data. The results from this project will eventually lead to program changes that improve the lives of Michigan children and families.
Ms. Pizzuti has also provided leadership for the Statewide Michigan Judicial Data Warehouse. She offered expert advice and strategy to the State Court Administrative Office during their project rollout and is highly regarded for her ability to negotiate with Michigan agencies to share data and document their agreements. In addition, she was the Project Director for the Federal Office of Child Support Demographic Survey project. Her responsibilities included working directly with IV-D Directors throughout the US to collect demographic child support data that was analyzed and used by the Federal Office of Child Support to gain knowledge of their customer base and create future funding strategies. Ms. Pizzuti came to Courtland in 2005 to direct the implementation and evaluation of a federally-funded grant project aimed at fatherhood and marriage promotion, Dads From Day One.
Ms. Pizzuti brings 20 years of Michigan Courts Experience with leadership expertise in human services. Her years at the Oakland County and Wayne County Circuit Courts as well as her communication and interface management role for the Statewide Michigan Child Support Enforcement System Federal Certification implementation makes her a well known expert in Courts, Child Support and Human Service programs.
Ms. Pizzuti holds a BA degree from Oakland University, and is a frequent presenter at Court and Human Service related conferences.
Michelle Le Feve, Director
Ms. Le Feve is a Director for Courtland Consulting. In this position, she is responsible for providing leadership, direction, and oversight on formulating cost-effective, interactive, and comprehensive learning programs and web solutions for Courtland’s clients.
Ms. Le Feve’s career with Courtland began with being contracted to the State of Michigan Child Support Program to provide implementation and training services. There, she managed a team that produced all state-wide communications in coordination with clients and stakeholders, including online customer service support tools, a new employee learning program, and the State’s formal response to meeting Federal Certification requirements.
In 2006, Ms. Le Feve was promoted to lead project manager and subsequently advanced to a Director position at Courtland, providing leadership in the areas of strategic business planning and development, expansion of web services, outreach and implementation service support, and protocols for improving the corporate training methodology.
Prior to assuming her employment with Courtland, Ms. Le Feve held a series of marketing positions in the software development and property management industries. Throughout this time, she created and executed annual marketing plans, developed new product marketing campaigns for various advertising mediums, and conducted marketing research and product testing programs.
Ms. Le Feve holds a BA in Business Marketing from Eastern Michigan University. She is an active volunteer, providing professional advice and development for multi-media promotion, fundraising, and training activities for numerous non-profit organizations. She is a member of the American Marketing Association and the American Society for Training & Development.
Mark Bateman, Principle Consultant
Mr. Bateman is responsible for infrastructure management, including IT strategy and planning, network management and security, desk-top support, and system reliability. He uses his computer programming skills to develop customized databases for our clients.
Mr. Bateman joined the Courtland team in 1992 as one of the original developers of Michigan’s first statewide Child Support Enforcement System (CSES). Bringing a strong background in computer programming, system analysis and information management to the CSES project, he successfully converted 20 counties from a stand-alone application to the new statewide system. This included mapping all data elements, developing code and conversion routines, and writing conversion reports. In the following years, Mark continued work on the CSES project, leading a variety of teams providing system development, analysis and support.
Prior to joining Courtland, Mr. Bateman held several positions in the areas of computer programming, IT management and system analysis.
Cari Filbrandt, Principle Consultant
Ms. Filbrandt is Courtland’s lead business analyst to the Michigan Child Support Enforcement System (MiCSES) project. A member of the Courtland team for over 7 years, Ms. Filbrandt has held key positions in the design of statewide financial functions of the MiCSES system and the federal certification process. Her extensive experience leading child support financial system development and managing child support system development interfaces with IV-A , IV-E, State Child Support Disbursement Unit, Department of Treasury and Federal Internal Revenue Service makes her a valuable member of the team.
In addition to her business analyst work in Child Support, Ms. Filbrandt has extensive implementation and customer support experience including work with the Ford Motor Company.
Ms. Filbrandt holds a BA from Michigan State University in Humanities and Pre-Law.
Sharon Christman, Senior Consultant
A Senior Consultant for Courtland, Ms. Christman leads the activities of the Implementation Team for the New Jersey Child Support project (NJKIDS). In this role, she is responsible for creating formal implementation and reporting plans, coaching staff, establishing new workflows based on business process impact analysis to establish new workflow and assuring proficiency of all end users on the new application.
Ms. Christman was selected by Courtland to work on the Michigan Child Support Enforcement System (MiCSES) project, where she held numerous management positions including oversight of customer support staff, customer service, triage, and change management. Ms. Christman’s contribution to the MiCSES project earned her a Governor’s Award in 2002 for outstanding efforts and for her commitment and dedication to providing a quality, trusted government service to the children of the State of Michigan. Prior to joining the Courtland team, Ms. Christman worked for Gerber Products Company, holding various positions in Marketing and Finance, and administration.
Gary Farr, Senior Consultant
Mr. Farr is a senior consultant for implementation. He currently acts as a lead for the implementation of the New Jersey Child Support Application (NJKIDS). He brings valuable insight as a child support professional with demonstrated experience in friend of the court and child support operations, statewide systems integration and customer support. With over 19 years experience he offers broad knowledge of all functional areas of child support including enforcement, financials and case management.
Upon joining Courtland in 2000, Mr. Farr acted as a Partner Support Representative for the Michigan Child Support Enforcement System (MiCSES), providing ongoing workflow analysis, training, and partner services recommendations. Later he took on the role of Regional Manager for the rollout of the Michigan Prosecuting Attorney’s Office module of the Michigan Child Support System, where he coordinated the implementation of an 18 county region onto a new statewide system. Other roles include Site Manager for the implementation of a 50,000-docket county, and Site Coordinator for the implementation of three Michigan counties onto the legacy system used prior to MiCSES.
Before joining the Courtland team, Mr. Farr worked in the juvenile and family court system of a large Michigan county. There he gained an extensive knowledge of the court system as a juvenile probation officer and later as supervising support enforcement officer.
Mr. Farr holds a BA in Social Science from Michigan State University.
Christopher Wurm, Senior Consultant
Mr. Wurm is a Senior Consultant serving as project manager for the Michigan Department of Education’s Continuous Improvement and Monitoring System (CIMS) project with partner Public Sector Consulting. In this role, he provides leadership and direction for application testing, training and customer support efforts for the project. This involves designing and executing testing plans, authoring web-based training, overseeing the creation of user documentation, creating and delivering classroom-based training, managing help desk staff and identifying and escalating help desk issues. Mr. Wurm has been instrumental in promoting a collaborative spirit between the partners on the project and within the user community.
Upon joining Courtland in 2000, Mr. Wurm worked as an implementation site coordinator for the Michigan Child Support Enforcement System (MiCSES) which involved coordinating all tasks related to the implementation/conversion of Michigan counties to the new state wide system.
Prior to joining Courtland Consulting, Mr. Wurm was a Business Analyst for Electronic Data Systems (EDS). While at EDS, he acted in the capacity of supervisor and team leader. In both leadership roles, he was responsible for managing individuals and providing customer support to a variety of clients, the largest being General Motors. His career began with MediFacts International as a business analyst where he conducted market research in the medical device field.
Mr. Wurm holds an undergraduate degree in business administration from Western Michigan University and a master’s degree in Business Administration from Baker College concentrated in Leadership and Information Technology.
