Russ Mills

As global Chief Financial Officer, I oversee all financial operations, guiding strategy, planning, and fiscal health. My responsibilities include financial planning and analysis, cash flow management, risk mitigation, and ensuring regulatory compliance. As a strategic partner, I collaborate closely with our sr. executive leadership team to drive business growth, support decision-making, and deliver accurate, timely financial reporting, ensuring that our financial foundation supports long-term success.

As the name implies, we are a firm focused on margin expansion using combination of data, analytics and practitioners who have come from industry and deeply understand the key levers of creating real & measurable value. I have responsibility for financial performance and organic revenue growth in this rapidly growing space. We operate across the entire end-to-end supply chain, including commercial pricing strategies & execution.

Transformation leader enabling large-scale, enterprise-wide data & analytics strategies with close to 50% of the global 2000 (G2K) companies. Helping companies increase efficiency & effectiveness while enabling quantifiable value transforming Finance, Supply Chain, Marketing and other complex functions | Partnering with sales to continually enhance go-to-market plays and approaches | Guiding companies on the people, process & tech elements of successful transformations to form a sustainable value-creation engine for growth and margin expansion.

Leading analytics-enabled transformation across business to propel growth and margin expansion using advanced AI and data analytics products and processes across a >$14B business unit of Stanley Black & Decker

Lead M&A integration office (IMO), AI & digital analytics transformation, G&A optimization and project management office (PMO) teams, responsible for performance resilience, margin expansion & digital culture.

We are reshaping the future of manufacturing using automation, robotics and big data analytics. My role is as Finance & Operations partner with responsibility for FP&A as well as operational activities for the organization, driving several hundred $M of operating cash flow benefits over a multi-year strategic horizon.

Lead finance activities across more than 25 manufacturing sites, globally within a $2B business unit, partnering with the VP of operations. Also provide support on diligence & integration activities related to M&A.

Executive Finance leader & business partner to company CIO across a large global IT shared services organization. Responsible for FP&A within IT & digital 'accelerator' investment, operating expense, M&A diligence, budgets & forecasts, technology business management (ITFM/TBM), labor & roadmap planning, co-developing IT sourcing office strategy as well as major functional/organizational SG&A transformation.

Dual responsibility as CFO & Indirect procurement leader, acting as the executive finance partner to Chief Procurement Officer | VP of Global Supply Management (GSM) for the company. Led team of 35 people across three significant areas of the global organization (Indirect procurement, sourcing processes & systems, GSM Finance FP&A)

Finance lead for start-up of new global program office to create global structure, process & results to drive 'game-changing' organic revenue growth and operating margin improvement with a multi-year program.

Led the Operations Finance FP&A Organization in a $3.5B portfolio of security businesses. Main areas of responsibility within gross margin, working capital, capital investment & business integration across a global footprint of manufacturing plants, distribution centers & field services operations.

Sr. leader & Co-Chair supporting the acquisition of Black & Decker (BDK) a $5B Global company. As the co-chair, responsibilities include the overall leadership of the entire Finance Integration inclusive of functional and business unit finance integration teams (14 functional teams; 5 Business unit teams & 38 Finance leaders), key decision-making, $425M synergy attainment & ability to successfully merge closing & other financial activities creating a combined company, more than doubling in size to over $9B in annual sales

Worked with entire portfolio of businesses, leading a team supporting Financial planning, analysis, reporting, budgeting/forecasting & driving performance improvement for The Stanley Works worldwide manufacturing, distribution and field operations. Main focus was productivity, inflation, working capital, investments and acquisition integration.

Led operations FP&A team in areas of cost productivity, commodity impacts and trending & working capital efficiency

Developed and led the quality compliance program for the Jet Engine delivery center including final assembly, validation and engine test at multiple sites. Focal point for external (3rd party) audits by Federal Aviation Agency (FAA), Defense Contract Management Agency (DCMA), ISO/AS 9100 registrars as well as airframe and airline customers: Boeing, Airbus, UPS, JAL and others.

Global operations program office, focusing on product cost reduction through low-cost and strategic supply chain manufacturing initiatives

Led organizational restructuring activity at three major operations sites in CT

Led team of 65 in tooling fabrication, alteration and productive maintenance integrated within turbine blade and vanes manufacturing cells. Capital equipment budgeting and expenditures across entire strategic tooling business

Certified tool & die maker who transitioned into 3D Computerized modeling & fabrication of complex tooling designs, fixtures and gauges needed to support jet engine and helicopter production and schedules.

Dolan School Of Business