The people that make your vision a reality

Meet our team of awesome people.

Kyle Pearson, CPA

Founder & CEO

Mona Echeverria

Senior Accounting & Payroll Specialist

Jacob Gunzel

Accounting & Payroll Specialist

Michelle Disterhoft

Client Relationship Manager

Michelle Ferguson, CPA, EA

Senior Tax Specialist

Maylene Pinili

Senior Tax Specialist

The Collective Difference

We take a standard of excellence in our work and we focus our service offerings around what we do best, so we can best serve our clients.

We believe in servant leadership and the work of maintaining client trust is a daily and unceasing effort.

We embrace new technologies that will enhance the client experience and allow us to better serve.

We think the whole is greater than any one individual and we welcome collaboration in order to deliver the highest quality.

We believe in value over volume and want clients to be here for as long as we are, so we forge long-term working relationships and leave space to advise all year round, even during our busy times.

Meet Our Partners

Wealth

Wealth experts specializing in investment management, collaborative wealth and estate planning, and holistic guidance.

Marketing

Our go to digital marketing agency, you’ll launch and grow quicker with these creative rock stars in your corner.

Let's work together

We want to be part of your tomorrow, no matter where you are today.

Kyle Pearson, CPA

Founder + CEO

Kyle formed Collective in 2012 with the conviction that strong relationships create meaningful outcomes, particularly in the public accounting world.  With prior stints at a large national firm, a complex real estate focused private equity fund, and a few stops with some local CPA firms, he observed common threads of need across businesses large and small, but saw a gap in how service was delivered particularly to small businesses and entrepreneurs and by other small CPA firms.  He’s been on a mission to unify and improve small business core accounting, payroll, and tax related services and then using insights gained from that foundation of information to guide organizational leaders towards making more insightful decisions that more closely align with their organizational mission & values.  Kyle provides leadership and strategic vision to the client advisory & accounting team while providing oversight support to the tax & compliance services team.

As an avid sports fan, you’ll probably find Kyle in his free time at a Portland Timbers or Trail Blazers game, coaching youth soccer, on a bike trail or golf course, traveling, chasing around his 3 young kids, annoying his wife, or perhaps some combination of all the above!

Mona Echeverria

Accounting & Payroll Specialist

As an accounting & payroll specialist, Mona thrives when given variety in her work.  It’s not always easy keeping track of hundreds of different tasks spread across hundreds of different clients, but Mona’s dedication and consistency are easily revealed in her role.  Whether she’s providing clients with bill pay or invoicing support, sales tax reporting, bank reconciliations, payroll processing, downloading client bank statements, complex accounting workflows or any other task, you can bet she will always get it done right and timely.  If “getting stuff done” was an Olympic sport, Mona would be more decorated than Michael Phelps.

Mona would describe herself as a workaholic, but she also enjoys animals, camping, and spending time with her family.  In the moments of quiet she allows herself, she’s usually reading a book or watching a movie.

Jacob Gunzel

ACCOUNTING & TAX SPECIALIST

Jake brings practical experience to his role as an accounting and tax specialist.  Having worn multiple small business organizational hats across a variety of industries in his professional career, Jake knows what the life of a small business is all about.  From triage and business operations at a local medical clinic, to running all the daily financial and operational aspects of a meadery (yes, you read that right), to caring for dogs (and their caretakers payroll), Jake has done it all as an insider in small business and he applies that experience to his role in the accounting and payroll world.     

Jake loves to spend time in nature exploring the world.   Jake currently resides in the bay area of northern California with his partner and two dogs.  When he’s not crunching numbers you’ll often find him on the hunt for good food spots or local haunts (hidden gems are always preferred) and enjoying what life has to offer every day.  It’s a great big world worth exploring!  

Michelle Disterhoft

Client Experience Manager

It’s often Michelle D. who you will have the honor of experiencing when you first contact Collective.  As our Customer Experience Manager, Michelle D. utilizes her gifts of communication & empathy to ensure clients are served well and we stay consistent to our values everyday.  By the way, she’s also an incredibly hard worker and maintains most of our core firm administrative workflows, provides year round communication, and helps us stay sane during tax season.  She is truly the oil that makes this engine hum.

Considering she was forced (okay, asked) to write her own bio from this point on, she considers herself to be earnest, candid, witty, sensitive and warm-hearted. She loves to make things fun but is equally, if not more, eager to dig deep and ponder life experiences in light of our shared humanity. She has plenty of shortcomings but of course won’t bore you with them here. Outside of work, you will usually find her relishing in the beauty of nature, music, reading, learning, watching something funny or sentimental, or connecting with those she loves and who graciously love her in return. She currently lives in Central Oregon with her 1 husband, 3 kids, and 2 short but mighty corgis, Winnie and Teddy.

Michelle Ferguson, CPA, EA

Senior Tax Specialist

Michelle F. is as dedicated and hard working as they come.  Having served in almost all areas of service at Collective during her time with us (including even tax season administration), Michelle brings a multidimensional perspective to her work and to the clients she serves.  She is particularly focused on providing a variety of tax advisory and compliance services to businesses and individuals while also overseeing some of our more complex business accounts.

Michelle F. is a Colorado native and loves the outdoors. In her free time she enjoys hiking, running, and yoga. Her favorite pastime is cooking and spending time with family. She is an avid animal lover and enjoys traveling.

Maylene Pinili

Tax Specialist

Maylene isn’t afraid of tax season, which isn’t surprising – if any of us had the same skillset to get things done as accurately, timely, and efficiently as Maylene, we probably wouldn’t either!  As a seasoned tax specialist, Maylene prepares many of the tax returns that come through our doors every year, and then provides consultative support in the offseason in helping with tax projections and proactive tax planning with our clients.  Saving you time and money everyday is her super power!   

When she’s taking a break from tax forms, Maylene spends most of her time outdoors and enjoys traveling. She tries to make a trip every year to explore somewhere new and try new cuisines – yes, truly a wandering soul.  Her other hobbies include listening to music or watching a binge worthy TV series or inspiring movie, but most of all she loves spending quality time with her niece and nephew.

Danny Evans

Capital Strategist

Jared Pearson

Capital Strategist

Wealth Management Partner

Strategy Cap is an independent wealth management firm offering comprehensive financial planning, wealth management solutions, and business consultative services. There is a natural intersecting point for the relative expertise that Collective and Strategy Cap both possess.

Our common alignment and similar clientele focus allows us to provide expanded wealth management and strategic business planning, particularly to our high net-worth clients who benefit daily from collaboration with Strategy Cap.

Jeff Barram

Web Director

Peter DeLap

Media Director

Digital Marketing Partner

Sproutbox is a digital marketing agency that’s been helping small to medium-sized businesses make their marketing shine since 2008. By partnering with brands they believe in, the Sproutbox team is passionate about telling their clients’ stories and helping their businesses grow.

Through our partnership with Sproutbox, Collective clients have the unique opportunity to collaborate with a digital marketing team that we know first hand will serve their sales and marketing needs well.  Our shared belief in delivering high value services to small businesses have enhanced our vision of enabling clients to grow fearlessly.