John Garofalo

Not many people know that John spent more than 30 years working in the HVAC industry after serving in the US Navy.

His expertise was in business operations, marketing and advertising, finance and planning, acquisitions, and service. In addition to his years of consulting to the HVAC industry, he demonstrated how to deliver atypically high profitability in various job functions.
He always focused on the importance of leadership, accountability, and implementation, which he learned as a Navy Seal.

How? John taught contractors about how to be Servant Leaders. Servant Leadership means having regular benchmarking with up-to-date performance results posted where everyone in the company can see them.

He emphasized the need for strong leadership with humble ethical and business standards. And most importantly, he taught contractors the vital importance of embracing change. He helped contractors to constantly look for and implement ways to improve their teams and processes. He preached high-performance leadership, accountability, and implementation.

John was all about having sincere care for people, “gettin’ er done,” and living with integrity. He always recommended contractors look at the decisions they had to make through the lens of whether “the juice is worth the squeeze.”

He took training to a personal level and mentored thousands of contractors across the country. His teaching centered not only on how to create processes and implement quality into a company, but he also taught many lessons on life and living.

Many contractors say that John’s mentorship helped their companies thrive, grow, and better serve their HVAC customers.
In 2016, John lost his battle with cancer. John invested the last five years of his career as a Business Coach and mentor for many NCI members. NCI created the John Garofalo Implementation Excellence Award to honor his legacy and positive influence on the High-Performance HVAC Industry. This award is presented to a contractor who regularly delivers measured performance in every aspect of their business. It is presented annually during NCI’s High-Performance HVAC Summit conference.

Nita Brooks

Though her early background was outside the HVAC Industry, it focused on the administration, development, and support of business processes in the manufacturing arena. Her goals were to accurately report company profitability while promoting business practices.

She brought those skill sets to the HVAC Industry in 2000 when Nita joined Contractor’s Success Group – an organization dedicated to improving the business practices of heating and air conditioning contractors across North America.

That business went through a few owners and name changes, but Nita was one of the constants.

One of that group’s name changes was International Service Leadership (ISL), which became part of the National Comfort Institute family in 2008. ISL’s team became NCI’s business development division. Her work evolved to creating tools and programs for High-Performance HVAC contractors across the country to help them improve and implement better processes to keep their businesses successful.

During her career with NCI, Nita embraced many roles: Preferred Vendor Program Manager, Business Coach, Course Instructor, Business Curriculum Development, and Business Product Development.

Over time, Nita developed educational webinars, wrote articles, and blog posts. She worked tirelessly with the rest of the team at NCI to create tools to continue helping contractors evolve and grow in terms of professionalism, craftsmanship, and the delivery of High-Performance Contracting techniques to members.

Furthermore, Nita was one of the early members of Women in HVACR, an organization to help attract and advance more women to the HVACR trades. She became a board member of that national organization and then became its president in 2011. She actively served her term and then as a member of their advisory board until her passing in 2017.

Her influence is still felt through the webinars and other training tools she developed and are still used in the HVAC Industry today.