Joe Yearta Joins Catalyzer’s Board of Directors
Lansing, Kansas – March 21, 2025: Catalyzer is pleased to announce Joe Yearta’s election to its Board of Directors. Yearta brings four decades of business leadership across multiple industries, including specific expertise dealing with government contracts.
Yearta is now VP of Growth and Strategy at Banner Defense, following a career of leading companies and developing people in settings around the world. Joe traveled extensively across the country and abroad, where he saw that businesses and divisions often find different solutions to common problems.
After spending years on the road and becoming an Executive Director, “I wanted to get back to Alabama,” he said, where he had been born, raised, and honed. When he returned, he joined small businesses, including Trideum in Huntsville, where he ran its business operations.
“There, my experience with government contracts and business operations helped us transition to the next level,” he said.
Wherever he has worked, he has deployed a keen eye for metrics, whether project management functions or finances.
So, Joe has seen and experienced what it takes for companies to set up, expedite and perform well.
Having been an executive in a large, publicly traded organization, he is intimately aware that complexities scale along with size and scope. And, while he enjoys those challenges, he has a soft spot for entrepreneurial enterprises, smaller companies. “That’s really my wheelhouse,” he said. “I have a passion for developing those who will transform the organization. I may not always know what’s next, but I can help guide the proper response.”
He is especially impressed by what he has seen at Catalyzer. “When you move the rocks, nothing crawls out. In fact, you note that Catalyzer goes beyond what’s required in terms of transparency.” This is a group of seasoned business professionals with real-world experience, to help organizations develop their next sets of leaders.”
For Yearta, “investing in the workforce” is a broad term that doesn’t always translate immediately to money. “That’s the space where Catalyzer is so effective,” he said. “Some folks only see the cost now of developing talent. Truly visionary leaders see value over the horizon, when someone who could leave for other opportunities instead chooses to stay because of culture and loyalty. Those decisions keep the training in house and avoid replacement costs.”
Steve Ingalls, Catalyzer’s president and CEO, is thankful that Yearta has agreed to work more closely with this growing organization. “I respect Joe’s experience and qualifications,” Ingalls said, “but even more important are his people-skills, which are at the very core of who we are and what we do.”
Catalyzer is a Kansas-based, veteran-owned small business that believes servant-leadership drives success and changes the world for the better. “We live out that conviction by offering tailored leadership development programs, one-on-one coaching, integral assessments, and studies that help you better understand your people and their place in your organization,” said Ingalls.
Since inception, Catalyzer has produced and led more than 560 separate programs across diverse industry sectors, developing more than 16,900 leaders nationwide. Organizations served include law enforcement, union/non-union manufacturing companies, community banks and their associations across seven states, engineering companies, and non-profits. Prominent organizations include McDonald’s, Utility Trailer Manufacturing, Tindall Corporation, Trideum Corporation, the Boy Scouts of America, and the County Sheriffs of Colorado.