Biography of Blythe McGarvie

Her firm specializes in addressing the business challenges of providing global perspectives to U.S. and multinational companies, primarily in the consumer goods and service industries. Her business insights and acumen are featured in a regular column in CFO Europe magazine and in speaking engagements at client company meetings and industry associations.

McGarvie is a Certified Public Accountant and earned an MBA degree from Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern University. She is a Director on the Boards of Accenture Ltd., The Pepsi Bottling Group, St. Paul Travelers Insurance, Lafarge North America, and Wawa Inc., and has served on numerous non-profit boards. She served on the Board of the Trustees at Northwestern University at the age of 29. Among her many honors and public recognitions, McGarvie received the Kellogg Graduate School of Management Schaffner Award in 1992, presented to an alumnus(a) who is pre-eminent in his or her field and who provided outstanding service to Kellogg.

After eight years as a chief financial officer and numerous requests to share her insights, McGarvie wrote a book called Fit In, Stand Out, Mastering the FISO Factor for Success in Business and Life,  published by McGraw-Hill in September 2005. From 1999 through December 2002, McGarvie was executive vice president and chief financial officer of BIC Group, a French company traded on the Paris Bourse and one of the world's leading manufacturers of convenient disposable products.

For five years prior to joining BIC, McGarvie was senior vice-president and chief financial officer of Hannaford Bros. Co., a U.S. $3 billion supermarket retailer, acquired by the DelHaize Group in 1999. Her international experience includes being based in Paris, France for BIC Group and as chief administrative officer-Pacific Rim of Sara Lee Corporation, based in Chicago, where she was responsible for the finance, strategy, information systems and human resources functions for the personal product business in Asia, Australia and South America, growing the division from $124 million to $600 million in sales over a three-year period ending in 1994.

McGarvie has been featured in numerous national and international publications, including The New York Times and CFO magazine.