Carol Flack

Phoenix Office:  Boston, MA
Email:  cflack@phoenixmanagement.com
Cell: 1-774-922-3680

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 for companies 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.

Carol is experienced with all elements of supply chain and has led manufacturing operations for both middle-market and Fortune 500 companies.  She has lived and worked internationally and held P&L responsibility for product-based companies headquartered in the US, Ireland, and the UK. 

Carol has repeatedly demonstrated the ability to work through complexity to offer effective, data-driven solutions.   She sees the big picture and is able to quickly focus on the critical variables to drive business success.  Examples include the turnaround of a $50M electronics business in Ireland – doubling sales and profitability over a three-year period and the operational redesign of the indirect procurement function for a Fortune 500 company resulting in savings of greater than 35% in categories not previously actively managed.

In 2020, she joined Governor Abbott’s Covid-19 Task Force for the State of Texas as Procurement Lead for the Supply Chain Strike Force.  Carol provided crisis leadership for procurement and test operations resulting in the procurement of >350M PPE and test supplies over a four-month period.

Life Before Phoenix

Carol started her career with Eaton Corporation, a US-based industrial manufacturing company, becoming a Plant Manager for an electronics manufacturing facility with 400 employees operating 5 x 24.  In this role, she transformed the facility from electro-mechanical manufacturing producing industrial controls to an electronics manufacturing facility producing industrial controls and truck electronics.  Under Carol’s leadership the team implemented stringent quality and test systems as the plant started manufacturing electronic control boards for anti-locking brakes on trucks.  During Carol’s tenure as Plant Manager, the plant increased productivity by 25%, shipment volume by 42%, and received Eaton’s Quality Award and ISO 9001 certification.

From this early career success, Carol assumed larger roles within increasingly larger organizations including direct procurement, indirect procurement, materials, customer service operations, and P&L roles for a wide array of companies.  Most recently, Carol held senior executive roles with Dell and Shark Ninja in operations/supply chain during the 2020/2021 global supply chain crisis.  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 market commodities and natural disasters.  

Education

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.

Other Activities

Carol is an active participant in the Association for Corporate Growth (ACG) and the Turnaround Management Association (TMA) in the Boston chapters.  She is also active in the Boston community providing pro bono business consulting services to non-profit organizations as a part of Community Consulting Teams (CCT) and is a member of the Board of Advisors for the Boston Museum of Science.  Prior to relocating to Boston, Carol served as a member of the Board of Directors of the North Carolina Tech Association eventually holding the position of Chairman.   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 and the American Manufacturing Summit.

Featured Engagements

• Supply Chain Advisor, publicly traded Security Technology Manufacturer:  Resolved material constraints for a manufacturer of security technology based in Silicon Valley that enabled the Company to convert the backlog of first-generation product into much needed cash. Developed a fully scaled production line for the commercialization of the next generation product.
• Operational Forensics, Contract Manufacturer of Precision Machined Parts and Electro-Mechanical Assemblies:   Investigated unexplained inventory fluctuations post-acquisition.  Mapped the inventory process, identified critical control points, and analyzed the system-generated inventory valuation reports.  Designed new inventory reports and established additional controls.  The Company has had no further unexpected adjustments to their financial statements due to inventory.