Carol Flack

Bio

Carol Flack is a Managing Director at Phoenix Management Services with more than 30 years of senior leadership experience in P&L roles and leading global operations teams in the technology and industrial sectors. She has had full P&L responsibility as General Manager/Managing Director for businesses ranging in size from $50mm to $350mm. Additionally, Carol has extensive operations experience as a senior executive and has led global teams for large public corporations such as Dell, EMC, and SharkNinja.

Carol has a history of leading successful business transformations by evaluating the financial and market drivers of profitability and then leading the organization to strategically focus on the critical few. She has lived and worked internationally with P&L responsibility for companies based in Ireland, the UK, and the U.S. Carol has extensive experience with all elements of supply chain and operations and has led large, global teams based in the U.S, the EU, China, India, Australia, Singapore, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Vietnam, Thailand, Mexico and Brazil.

Carol is adept at analyzing global supply chains and incorporating the agility needed to allow the business to quickly respond to disruptions such as plant/country closings due to Covid-19, punitive tariffs, constrained commodities, and natural disasters. Carol has held executive leadership roles in operations/supply chain for Dell and SharkNinja during the 2020/2021 global supply chain crisis.

Drawing on her diverse international experience and intellectual curiosity, Carol has repeatedly demonstrated the ability to work through complexity to offer effective, data-driven solutions. She has the ability to see the big picture and is able to quickly focus on the critical variables to drive business success

Life Before Phoenix

Carol began her career with Eaton Corporation, a U.S. based industrial manufacturing company, becoming a Plant Manager for an electronics manufacturing facility with 400 employees running 5 x 24 in Wisconsin. In this role, she transformed the facility from electro-mechanical to electronic production and under Carol’s leadership the facility was awarded ISO certification and won the Eaton Quality Award.

From this start, Carol led progressively larger functions and businesses including P&L responsibility for a $50mm Irish contract manufacturing company, P&L responsibility for a $100mm UK enclosure company (specialty products), and P&L responsibility for a $350mm U.S. specialty chemicals company. Most recently, Carol has held senior executive roles with Dell and Shark Ninja in operations/supply chain.

Education & Affiliations

Carol holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Chemical Engineering from the University of Maryland and a Master of Business degree with a concentration in Finance from Carnegie Mellon University. Carol is active in the Boston community providing pro bono business consulting services to non-profit organizations volunteering with both the Center for Women in Enterprise (CWE) and Community Consulting Teams (CCT). She is a member of the Turnaround Management Association. 

Prior to relocating to Boston, Carol served as a member of the Board of Directors of the North Carolina Tech Association from 2016-2019, holding the position of Chairman in 2019.   She was also a member of the Board of Directors of the NC Chamber of Commerce between 2016 and 2019. Carol is a frequent speaker at industry conferences including North American Manufacturing Excellence Summit 2019 and the American Manufacturing Summit in 2021.

Featured Transactions

Managing Director, Contract Manufacturing: Implemented marketing and sales strategy for a $50mm company that resulted in business moving from a loss-making situation to growing sales and profits at a rate of 100% per year. Successfully negotiated with Irish IDA regarding grants.

VP/General Manager, Enclosure Products: Managed $100mm business through Chapter 11 after dot.com crash in 2001, reduced employee base by 32%, and implemented overhead cost reductions by 40%.

Sr. Director, Indirect Procurement, Computer Products: Improved efficiencies and accountability led to achieving savings of greater than 35% on categories not previously actively managed, including travel, software, human capital, and marketing. Led mature international procurement teams across 48 countries to achieve greater than 6% savings per year on previously managed categories of spend.

Sr. Director, Customer Service Operations, Computer Products: Implemented vision for efficient, low-cost model to drive process standardization across all services. Established operations in low-cost geos achieving 10% reduction in operating cost while increasing headcount by 23%. Optimized lab operations resulting in a 48% reduction in annual capital expense.

Senior Purchasing Executive, Electrical Products: Achieved savings of $45mm on purchases of $750mm per year by integrating an acquired company into one supply chain and developing commodity sourcing teams. Delivered a 40% supplier/vendor reduction resulting in greater efficiencies.