About Us

Schafer Group is a coaching and consulting practice based in Melbourne, Australia, supporting individuals and organisations through career and leadership transitions.

We work with people at points where something is shifting and familiar ways of working no longer feel sufficient. This includes individuals navigating career change, redundancy, or increased responsibility, as well as leaders and organisations responding to complexity, growth and change.

Our work focuses on helping people make sense of what is happening, clarify what matters now, and move forward with sound judgement and confidence. The approach is psychologically informed and grounded in organisational realities, balancing reflection with action and depth with forward movement.

We place strong value on thoughtful working relationships and approach each engagement with curiosity, care and respect for our clients’ experience and capability. We work closely with individuals and organisations to understand contexts, patterns and pressures, and to support decisions that are considered and sustainable.

Our work draws on extensive experience in organisational psychology, leadership development and coaching, informed by many years working within large and complex organisations. This background shapes an approach that is practical, context-aware and attuned to both the personal and organisational dimensions of change.

Our Team 

Lisa Schafer: Director and Principal Consultant

Lisa is an executive coach and psychologist with over 25 years’ experience working with individuals, leaders and organisations through change.

Her work draws on a background in organisational psychology and experience across leadership development, talent management, career development, psychosocial safety and cultural change. Lisa understands the realities of complex organisations and team dynamics, and works with clients to explore the relationship between strategy, trust, performance and leadership impact.

In her coaching work, Lisa takes a psychologically informed, strengths-based approach. She supports individuals to develop greater clarity, confidence, and resilience as they navigate leadership challenges, career transitions and periods of change. Her clients work across a wide range of industries, including financial services, healthcare, education, science, law, retail, manufacturing, media and government.

Clients often describe Lisa as calm and grounded, while also thoughtful, challenging and direct. She is known for building strong working relationships, asking questions that surface underlying patterns and blind spots, and helping people move from insight to action. In team and organisational settings, she has a particular capacity to notice what is unspoken and to work with complex and sensitive issues in a way that is respectful and constructive.

Lisa’s career includes roles in organisational development, consulting and human resources within organisations such as Australian Unity, ANZ, Monash University, Hudson, PPC Worldwide and Myer. This experience informs a practical and context-aware approach to her work.

She holds a Master of Organisational Psychology, a Postgraduate Diploma in Psychology and a Bachelor of Science. Lisa is a member of the Association for Coaching and the Career Development Association of Australia, a Narrative Coach Enhanced Practitioner, and is accredited in a range of psychometric and career assessment 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, 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.