About Kestralis Group

Built by practitioners. Designed for what's coming.

Two U.S. Army veterans. Decades of operational and enterprise experience. A firm with the founders actually doing the work.

Why Kestralis exists

The gap between a plan on paper and a program that works is not a gap you want to discover on the day it matters.

Mid-market organizations sit in a difficult position. They face most of the same threats the Fortune 100 faces — targeted workplace violence, insider risk, litigation exposure, regulatory attention — without the budget for a full-time security director, a protective intelligence team, or a licensed investigative capability in-house.

The consulting category that serves them is dominated by generalists. HR firms selling template plans. Safety vendors selling one-day trainings. Large consultancies selling binders. When an actual threat or incident arrives, those engagements fall silent.

Kestralis Group was founded to close that gap. We bring enterprise-grade program design and operational discipline to clients who need it most and can access it least — and we back it with a licensed investigations capability when a case escalates.

— The Principals

Two operators. Decades of enterprise and government experience.

Founding team · Kestralis Group LLC

— 01

Mark Hope

Managing Member

Mark served in the United States Army's Ranger Regiment, Special Forces, and 1st Special Forces Operational Detachment-Delta. Following his military career, he held senior international roles with The Coca-Cola Company across Europe, and later founded Asymmetric Applications Group, a licensed private investigations agency. He holds a bachelor's degree from Campbell University, is a Certified Fraud Examiner, a member of ASIS International, and has completed the U.S. Department of State's Protective Operations training.

Credentials

Delta Force
Army Ranger
Coca-Cola — Europe
Licensed Private Investigator
Certified Fraud Examiner (CFE)
U.S. Dept of State — Protective Operations
ASIS International

— 02

John Scheffler, CBCP

Chief Operating Officer

John is a U.S. Army veteran with deployed tactical operations experience. He currently leads global security risk at The Dow Chemical Company, and previously managed risk and resilience at Catalent and ran the Global Security Operations Center at Exact Sciences and American Family Insurance. He holds CBCP certification from DRI International, Advanced Executive Protection certification from Executive Security International, and FEMA Emergency Management Institute credentials. He is completing an MSc in Security Management and Intelligence at the University of Portsmouth, with a dissertation on intelligence consumption in contemporary corporate security programs.

Credentials

US Army Veteran
CBCP (DRI International)
Executive Protection (ESI)
FEMA EMI
MSc Security Management (UoP)

— Our Standard

What every engagement reflects.

Three principles · applied without exception

— 01

Defensibility is the default.

Every plan, report, and recommendation is written to hold up in front of a regulator, an auditor, or a plaintiff's counsel. Not because we expect the worst, but because that is the only standard worth meeting.

— 02

The work is the work.

No theatrics. No manufactured urgency. We show up, we do the work, we document it, and we stand behind it. The deliverable reads like the program it represents.

— 03

Operators recognize operators.

Our clients and our buyers tend to share a background or a bearing. We speak plainly, write plainly, and make decisions the same way we were trained to — with the facts on the table.

— Engage

A thirty-minute conversation with a principal.

If there's a program to build, an incident to respond to, or a decision on the table, we're ready to help you think through it.

Schedule a Consultation