Summary
Overview
Work History
Education
Skills
Certification
References
Timeline
Generic

Gina Faso

Mount Prospect,Illinois

Summary

High Impact Business Executive Performance-driven Vice President with [Number] years of experience aligning systems with business requirements, policies and regulatory requirements. Passionate about applying excellent organization and communication skills to manage and lead teams. Results-oriented individual well-versed in interfacing and consulting on business processes to drive results based on sound overall business judgment. Accomplished [Job Title] with progressive industry background and decisive leadership style. Offers strategic planning abilities, background in change management and forward-thinking mindset. Ready for challenges and focused on meeting future demands.

Overview

15
15
years of professional experience
1
1
Certification

Work History

Vice President, Finance

ACCO Brands
02.2020 - Current
  • Enhanced company profitability by implementing strategic business plans and optimizing operational processes.
  • Led cross-functional teams for the successful completion of major projects, resulting in increased efficiency and client satisfaction.
  • Developed new revenue streams by identifying growth opportunities and forging strategic partnerships with key industry players.
  • Spearheaded organizational restructuring initiatives, streamlining operations and reducing overhead costs.
  • Established a culture of continuous improvement, fostering innovation and driving sustainable growth across the organization.
  • Championed talent development programs, promoting employee engagement and retention while enhancing overall workforce capabilities.
  • Managed financial planning and budgeting processes, ensuring fiscal responsibility and maximizing return on investments.
  • Cultivated strong relationships with key stakeholders, including customers, vendors, regulators, and community leaders to promote collaboration and long-term success.
  • Negotiated high-value contracts that maximized profitability while mitigating risks for the organization.
  • Ensured regulatory compliance at all times by implementing robust internal controls systems coupled with proactive monitoring mechanisms.
  • Built high-performance teams through effective recruitment practices focused on competency alignment coupled with ongoing performance management processes.
  • Leveraged technology to automate workflows and streamline processes, resulting in increased productivity and cost savings across the organization.
  • Demonstrated proficient leadership skills to motivate employees and build competent teams.
  • Collaborated with senior management to develop strategic initiatives and long term goals.
  • Mitigated regulatory risks by overseeing adherence to insurance and safety regulations.
  • Established and maintained strong relationships with customers, vendors and strategic partners.
  • Managed financial, operational and human resources to optimize business performance.
  • Collaborated with legal, accounting and other professional teams to review and maintain compliance with regulations.
  • Monitored industry trends, keeping current on latest changes and competition in industry.

Vice President – Global IT Governance, Global Productivity Improvement

ACCO Brands Corporation
01.2017 - 02.2020
  • Promoted by executive management, to expand responsibilities, to drive ACCO Brands Global continuous process improvement/Lean initiatives
  • Supporting and advising the CEO, CFO and CIO of identifying waste
  • Providing leadership, training, coaching, mentoring and change management for teams and individuals across the entire organization to sustain and drive both hard and soft cost savings through participation and focus on productivity and Lean initiatives delivering on expectations that are reported to our shareholders quarterly
  • Developed and analyze key performance targets and new training tools consistent with corporate initiatives and global best practices
  • Lead this strategic initiative for the Corporation delivering four tools, training 1200 team members who led 440 projects resulting in $38.3M in cost savings in 2017, $39.4M in 2018 and are on track to deliver comparable savings for 2019.
  • Enhanced company profitability by implementing strategic business plans and optimizing operational processes.
  • Led cross-functional teams for the successful completion of major projects, resulting in increased efficiency and client satisfaction.
  • Spearheaded organizational restructuring initiatives, streamlining operations and reducing overhead costs.
  • Established a culture of continuous improvement, fostering innovation and driving sustainable growth across the organization.
  • Cultivated strong relationships with key stakeholders, including customers, vendors, regulators, and community leaders to promote collaboration and long-term success.
  • Negotiated high-value contracts that maximized profitability while mitigating risks for the organization.
  • Delivered strong financial performance despite challenging economic conditions by executing prudent risk management strategies throughout all aspects of business operations.
  • Transformed customer experience by designing and executing comprehensive service improvement initiatives aimed at enhancing satisfaction levels.
  • Leveraged technology to automate workflows and streamline processes, resulting in increased productivity and cost savings across the organization.
  • Hired and managed employees to maximize productivity while training staff on best practices and protocols.
  • Established performance goals for department and provided methods for reaching milestones.
  • Developed and implemented new strategies and policies to establish long-term business objectives and provide strong and sustainable organizational leadership.
  • Developed program to promote new managers from within, building and maintaining cohesive leadership structure.
  • Monitored key business risks and established risk management procedures.
  • Devised and presented business plans and forecasts to board of directors.

Vice President – Global IT Governance

ACCO Brands Corporation
01.2015 - 01.2017
  • Asked by executive management to take on a newly created role advising a new CIO
  • Providing leadership and driving strategy and change management for governing IT process and technology that will ensure sustained participation and improved communication between the global region business and IT team
  • Assist the new CIO to learn the business and deliver an agile IT vision in collaboration with business strategies and objectives to achieve increased value
  • Provide leadership that embraces accountability in a formalized, structured manner
  • Create vision, direction and roadmap for goal attainment in the areas of PMO, audit/compliance, asset management, financial controls/budget, vendor management and communication
  • Execute strategic approaches for value delivery with responsibility for $64 million (USD) global budget
  • Visionary lead for new governance pillar to develop a dynamic approach to PMO, vendor/asset management and audit/compliance that reduces risk, and maximizes the transparency and governance of the department to the business leaders
  • Advisor and confidant to CIO, providing support and guidance on business and global IT initiatives to drive the business value of IT with keen focus on cost benefit realization, IT brand and perception, alignment of initiatives to business requirements
  • Responsible for the maturity of IT vendor programs including planning, execution, and performance of all activities related to contract requirements
  • Established and built excellent trust-based working relationships with IT team, business partners and vendor(s)
  • Effectively grew and maintained business relationships with the vendors
  • Provide thought leadership on Service Level Agreements (SLAs)
  • Oversight and development of IT Global financial controls and asset management
  • Setting policy and evaluation criteria for investment portfolio to aid in business decision making, ongoing allocation of funds, people and other assets
  • Management of $64M global budget
  • Serve as the IT Sponsor for audit and compliance to the IT general controls and policies
  • Setting policy, controls and design processes to ensure compliance for internal and external audit across all regions
  • Conduct risk assessments and provide opinions on performance in the compliance area
  • Build and maintain change control processes as well as a risk registry improving maturity across the global regions.
  • Enhanced company profitability by implementing strategic business plans and optimizing operational processes.
  • Led cross-functional teams for the successful completion of major projects, resulting in increased efficiency and client satisfaction.

Vice President – Analytics and Business Intelligence

ACCO Brands Corporation
01.2014 - 01.2015
  • Grew previous role to additional responsibility of providing advice and leadership driving strategy for pricing, program management, business intelligence/decision support teams: create vision, direction and roadmap for goal attainment
  • Execute strategic approaches for go-to-market planning and budgets with responsibility for 1 of 3 organic growth levels and the second largest expense line on the US P&L
  • Directed and aligned personnel with business resource requirements and provided oversight of processes
  • Served as the primary advisor to business leaders for interactions across functions for contract programs and project portfolio regarding profit and loss (P&L) performance reporting as well as management of assigned contract resources
  • Responsible for the full lifecycle for designated programs contract including planning, execution, and performance of all activities related to contract requirements; established and maintained ongoing monitoring and control activities for all team resources and deliverables
  • Executive sponsor of strategic pillar to develop a dynamic and holistic approach to pricing that maximizes the amount of profit received in exchange for the value provided by shifting the trade stakeholder and consumer focus away from price and onto value
  • Giving thought to the long-term consequences of pricing decisions, resulting proactive control for market conditions as opposed to responding to them
  • Primary liaison for the integration of back end operations of pricing, data standards and sales administration processes between Mead Consumer Office Products and ACCO Brands
  • Develop and analyze key performance indicators, established objectives consistent with corporate initiatives
  • Provided leadership and drove improvement to incorporate unified processes, controls and governance across the organization and conjoined employees to ensure seamless integration
  • Charged to lead the change management efforts to create a customer centric/focused culture
  • Drove business results for our key customers by co-owning specific performance metrics and solutions
  • Developed metrics and monitored key performance indicators; provided extensive knowledge of customer dynamics throughout our organization to deliver 10% increase in revenue, 6% increase in profit and 12% increase in service metrics to the customers we partnered with.

Vice President Marketing - Category Management and Merchandising

ACCO Brands Corporation
01.2012 - 01.2014
  • Maximized collaborative ongoing advisor position with retailer partners to manage shopper need states with the goal of optimizing shopper satisfaction through category management
  • Leverage analysis and point of sale opportunities to create alignment with the shopper need states and categories chosen by the retailer to attract and satisfy the end user demand
  • Optimized pricing, promotion, placement, and assortments to maximize profits and shopper satisfaction at the point of purchase
  • Prescribed solutions that provide maximized ROI for business and flexibility for the customer
  • Ensured client success and established trusted advisor status with business and stakeholders
  • Spearheaded business opportunities providing clients with analytics, scalable solutions, and opportunity to utilize turnkey solutions to simplify the path to purchase for the shopper
  • Excellent at translating insights into breakthrough concepts and actionable experience strategies
  • Created comprehensive customer plans that exceeded shopper needs out performing competition, delivering business results for all stakeholders
  • Developed a holistic fact-based approach to insights, sound strategies and proven tactical success models
  • Drove customer satisfaction through an understanding of shopper unmet needs and wants combined with external partner research, retailer and syndicated data into a concise taxonomy
  • Built qualitative and quantitative analysis to develop groundbreaking insights and fill in knowledge gaps to deliver a complete solution
  • Uncovered over $2.5M actionable insights based on consumer and shopper needs, wants and behaviors
  • Project Management lead for the integration of category management processes between Mead Consumer Office Products and ACCO Brands
  • Drove improvement in abilities across the business acquiring awards of 3 new advisor titles including at Walmart and Target titles
  • Managed expense budget of over $102.8MM for merchandising, meta-data management and tools for business development
  • Championed Go to Market process to facilitate collaborative strategic alignment and communication for marketing and sales.

Vice President Marketing - Analytics, Pricing and Channel Management

ACCO Brands Corporation
01.2011 - 01.2012
  • Promoted to Vice President after spending five years in director leadership roles with heavy concentrations of work in marketing, analytics, building optimized teams, and architecting skills development that support the business objectives of the organization
  • Maximized access, share and profitability with stringent internal controls and financial analysis
  • Proactively built, inspired, motivated and nurtured relationships with cross functional teams and customers
  • Developed process improvements to better assist with pull through programs
  • Conducted effective analysis as part of identifying growth and revenue-generating opportunities
  • Defined specific strategies and goals for each channel segment
  • Constructed well-defined polices for administering the accounts within the channel
  • Identified products best suited for each trade segment and developed appropriate messaging
  • Designed support programs for the channels that met client needs - product training, co-op advertising, seasonal promotions, and merchandising
  • Collaborated with business partners to lead channel category strategy for product lines; set pricing, discounts, and special promotions and proposed special offers to key customers to enhance success
  • Through special product and marketing programs, over $2 million surplus of unbudgeted revenue in 2011 during a challenging economic environment through analytics, fact based selling and category strategies
  • Championed and implemented strategic price actions supported by business analytics to secure revenue growth of 2% and 5% respectively during challenging economic conditions
  • Managed expense budget of over $2,5MM for Meta data management and tools for business development
  • Delivered over $3.1MM in annual savings from continuous process improvement initiatives in customer price and program initiatives.

Director Marketing Analytics, Data Standards and Pricing

ACCO Brands Corporation
01.2009 - 01.2011
  • Selected by senior management to create and lead a team in the development of the category analysis and data standards for analytics in the Americas region
  • Supported strategic objectives designed to facilitate a change in business decision making, improving performance and business tools
  • Implemented ACCO’s first category analysis process to advise strategic partners
  • Leveraged extensive business acumen to analyze multi-million-dollar business; identified key performance indicators, and drove strategies to improve performance and company profitability year over year by 5+% annually.

Education

Master of Business Administration -

Lake Forest Graduate School of Management
01.2001

Bachelor of Arts -

University of Illinois
01.1993

Skills

  • Operations Management
  • Risk Management
  • Resource Allocation
  • Staff Development
  • Contract Negotiation
  • Financial Management
  • Forecasting
  • Process Improvement
  • Business Development
  • Metrics Tracking
  • Critical Thinking
  • Rules and Regulations
  • Strategic Planning
  • Performance Monitoring
  • Team Leadership
  • Policy and Procedure Development
  • Coaching and Mentoring
  • Recruiting and Hiring
  • Training and Mentoring
  • Budget Oversight
  • Negotiation and Persuasion
  • Complex Problem-Solving
  • Documentation and Reporting
  • Budget Administration
  • Regulatory Compliance
  • Conflict Resolution
  • Organizational Skills
  • Stakeholder Engagement
  • Leadership Development
  • Change Management
  • Business Planning

Certification

  • Project Management Professional
  • ISACA, Governance Enterprise of Information Technology education
  • Harvard Business School and Publishing, Strategy Execution Development
  • Category Management Association, Certified Professional Category Manager
  • Acuity Institute - LSS Six Sigma, Black Belt Certification
  • Center for Creative Leadership, Leadership Development Certification

References

References available upon request.

Timeline

Vice President, Finance

ACCO Brands
02.2020 - Current

Vice President – Global IT Governance, Global Productivity Improvement

ACCO Brands Corporation
01.2017 - 02.2020

Vice President – Global IT Governance

ACCO Brands Corporation
01.2015 - 01.2017

Vice President – Analytics and Business Intelligence

ACCO Brands Corporation
01.2014 - 01.2015

Vice President Marketing - Category Management and Merchandising

ACCO Brands Corporation
01.2012 - 01.2014

Vice President Marketing - Analytics, Pricing and Channel Management

ACCO Brands Corporation
01.2011 - 01.2012

Director Marketing Analytics, Data Standards and Pricing

ACCO Brands Corporation
01.2009 - 01.2011

Master of Business Administration -

Lake Forest Graduate School of Management

Bachelor of Arts -

University of Illinois

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Gina Faso