About Us
Schafer Group is a specialised coaching, consulting, and mental health practice based in Melbourne, Australia.
We work with people who are seeking a better way to navigate personal and professional change, including people affected by redundancy, mothers returning to work after parental leave, new leaders, seasoned leaders, those with high potential, executives, and business owners.
Our approach is holistic and strengths-based. We value the strong and lasting relationships we build with our clients. We take an open-minded and curious stance, viewing clients as naturally resourceful and creative, capable of learning, choosing, and taking action to achieve their goals and objectives.
Our work is anchored in practical, evidence-based approaches and influenced by positive psychology, mindfulness, acceptance and commitment therapy, appreciative inquiry, narrative coaching, immunity to change, and growth mindsets.
For inspiration, practical tips and the latest thinking on a range of leadership and career-related topics, follow Schafer Group on Facebook and LinkedIn.
Our Team
Lisa Schafer: Director and Principal Consultant
Lisa is a registered psychologist and executive coach with 20+ years of experience and expertise in leadership development, talent management, career development, psychosocial safety and cultural change.
Lisa understands complex organisations and team dynamics, and works with clients to facilitate the alignment between business strategy, team trust, performance, and leadership impact.
When coaching, Lisa uses a holistic, strengths-based approach to help individuals enhance their clarity, confidence, and resilience. This contributes to improvements in areas including leadership impact, capability development, career transition, and navigating change. Lisa has worked with clients at all levels in industries including financial services, healthcare, education, science, law, retail, real estate, manufacturing, media, and government.
Her clients describe her as calm and caring, while also unexpectedly challenging and direct. Lisa has the ability to build strong relationships quickly, ask brave, powerful, and intuitive questions to uncover underlying issues and blind spots, and move clients to action effectively. Clients also see her as someone who can efficiently reveal the unspoken in team environments, and tackle complex and difficult issues with compassion and respect.
Lisa’s career also includes roles in organisational development, consulting, and human resources for organisations including Australian Unity, ANZ Bank, Monash University, Hudson, PPC Worldwide, and Myer.
She holds a Masters of Organisational Psychology, Postgraduate Diploma in Psychology, Bachelor of Science and Certificate IV in Assessment and Workplace Training. Lisa holds membership with Association for Coaching and Career Development Association of Australia. She is a Narrative Coach Enhanced Practitioner, and also accredited in a range of psychometric assessments and career profiling tools that support her work.
Raj Khetarpal: Senior Consultant
Raj is a leadership and career development coach who has worked in a variety of settings, diverse industries and sectors. Raj has extensive experience in highly people centric roles and has formulated people, talent, culture and career strategies for business growth and turnaround in small, medium and large organisations.
With a background in change management, Raj is an expert at rapidly analysing a situation and working with individuals and teams to become comfortable with change and continuously improving.
Raj partners with his clients in clarifying their strategic advantage through identification of their purpose, highlighting their skills, cultural fit and value proposition; and in communicating that effectively in writing and in presentation. In mapping out a strategy with the outcome in mind (reverse engineering from the end goal), and then coaching in a sharper and targeted manner that helps the client in presenting their story with impact, thus gaining success.
Raj’s diverse career includes roles in operations management, career transition, talent acquisition and attraction, and human resources management at the Department of Justice, Hudson, ANZ Bank, Open Universities Australia, ME Bank and Latitude Financial Services.
Recognised for establishing and leading high-performing teams and provision of advisory, consultancy and business partnering services within fast paced, challenging environments.
Raj holds a Masters in Human Resource Management.
Carlos Schafer: Principal Consultant
Carlos is a senior executive, registered psychologist, executive coach and entrepreneur. Carlos has been a group executive in education, technology and financial services. He has led venture capital businesses, the development of new products, managed sales teams, organisational transformations, divestments, and people and culture functions.
Carlos has founded businesses in psychology, telephony security and mind training software companies. His diverse experiences and perspectives inform his practice as a coach and allow him to support leaders at all levels, including managing complex relationships with boards.
As a certified ontological coach, Carlos supports clients to enhance their leadership capabilities, lives and careers, in a holistic manner. Those that have worked with Carlos describe him as passionate and driven in everything he does, adaptable, resilient and creative at dealing with change and challenges. Some coaching clients have also shared that working with him is a deep professionally transformative experience that creates profound personal shifts and alteration of world-views.
Carlos enables clients to see distinctions in how they observe their situations and environments, to shift their thinking and create new ways to achieve results and success. Rather than using a predefined coaching script, Carlos combines a deep learning and artistry approach to empower others to better serve themselves, expand their possibilities, increase their capacity to learn, act more effectively and better design their future.
Carlos holds a Masters of Business Administration (MBA), Postgraduate Diploma in Human Resources, and Diploma in Ontological Coaching. He has completed the Australian Institute of Company Directors (AICD) course and is a registered psychologist. Carlos has worked in four continents, studied in three of them, and has settled in Melbourne with his young family.