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Blythe McGarvie is a leadership expert with a specific focus on financial acumen. A former corporate executive, she has operated profitable business units and managed thousands of employees from China to Chile, France to Finland. Today, she channels her experience to help clients achieve transformative results by blending leadership skills with a rigorous commitment to financial performance.

A pioneer in every sense, Blythe was the youngest person to earn her MBA from Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management. She went on to assume several high-profile C-suite roles and—in 1995—stood out as one of only ten female CFOs in the Fortune 500. Her reputation attracts global attention, and Blythe currently serves on the boards of Accenture, Pepsi Bottling Group, The Travelers Companies (Insurance), Viacom, and Wawa Inc. As a director, she contributes her perspective on a broad range of issues including leadership, consumer markets, and worldwide economic trends.

The founder and president of Leadership for International Finance (LIF), Blythe heads a team of experts committed to increasing clients' business performance. LIF provides strategic and financial counsel to help clients achieve near-term and long-term economic objectives and enhance corporate governance. The firm incorporates an integrated, global approach to help companies grow by maximizing the potential of three key resources: money, people and information.

Prior to founding LIF, Blythe was based in Paris as the executive vice president and chief financial officer of BIC Group, one of the world's leading manufacturers of convenient disposable products. Previously, she served as senior vice president and CFO of Hannaford Bros. Co., a Fortune 500 supermarket retailer that was acquired by the DelHaize Group in 1999. Before joining Hannaford, Blythe was chief administrative officer - Pacific Rim, Sara Lee Corporation. In that capacity, she was responsible for the finance, strategy, information systems, and human resources functions for the personal product business in Asia, Australia, and South America, and she grew the division from $124 million to $600 million in sales over a three-year period ending in 1994.

In October 2005, Blythe published Fit In, Stand Out—Mastering the FISO Factor: The Key to Leadership Effectiveness in Business and Life to wide acclaim. According to strategy guru Ram Charan, “Blythe distills what really works from real life experiences in order to share how to be a successful leader.”

Blythe has been featured in The New York Times, CFO magazine, and Fast Company. She has also appeared on CNBC. Additionally, she writes the Corporate Leadership column for Shattered magazine. She was the Your Move columnist for CFO Europe in 2003. Consumer Goods Technology featured Blythe in a 2002 cover story (“World Class CFO”) and a Business Finance cover story featured her in a piece on “Financial Reporting: How the Best CFOs Get it Right the First Time.”

Blythe is a Certified Public Accountant and earned an MBA degree from Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern University. She received the Kellogg Graduate School of Management Schaffner Award, presented to an alumnus(a) who is pre-eminent in his or her field and who provided outstanding service to Kellogg. In 2003, she was appointed as Senior Fellow of The Kellogg Innovation Network.

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