A board member at Epi Breads and FPL Foods and a seasoned P&L leader, Cynthia Baerman’s career reflects numerous achievements in the C-suite of highly acquisitive publicly traded public companies along with private, family, and ESOP companies. Cindy’s executive leadership and P&L management roles with industry leaders in the CPG, packaging, chemical, and environmental services space include Graphic Packaging International, JohnsonDiversey/Sealed Air, Stericycle, Kraft Foods, Miller Brewing, Anheuser-Busch, and TRW. In these positions, she has partnered with executive teams and corporate boards to spearhead cultural change and strategic growth initiatives, and to provide strategic leadership leading to the achievement of critical corporate goals across operations in highly human capital-intensive industries.

Cindy currently serves as the CEO of Executive Advisory Services, serving as an advisor to several CEOs in the arena’s sales force effectiveness, organization design post-merger, CEO succession, and total rewards strategy in high growth private industries and a large $39 billion public transportation company. At Epi Breads she serves as the chair of the compensation and benefits committee and recently partnered with the chairman to replace the CEO. She previously served as director of the Graphic Packaging International Limited board, the Human Resource Leadership Forum, and the American Cancer Society Northshore board.
Cindy’s ability to provide strategy, leadership, and extraordinary contributions to corporate growth and success stems, in part, from her early career in progressive manufacturing management roles, and through the success she achieved in a P&L, general management role as vice president and general manager of JohnsonDiversey’s $100 million food and beverage division. Over three years in this position, she provided the strategy and operational direction that generated significant year-over-year revenue growth in difficult markets.

While adept at working with acquisitions, Cindy has significantly driven organic growth by implementing new go-to-market strategies in three unique B-to-B businesses. Through the use of market segmentation and redefining value propositions, she has been able to drive 3 percent to 7 percent growth in mature or declining markets.

As senior vice president, human resources of the $5 billion public company Graphic Packaging International, Cindy served as a trusted advisor to the board of directors and executive officers. Her compensation and benefits management expertise was invaluable. In her first three years, Graphic Packaging was transformed from a 7.1 leverage ratio to 3:1. She implemented multiple strategies across the 15,000 global workforce and 65 labor unions and work councils to drive significant savings, including the development of a labor strategy that delivered $28 million in annual medical benefits savings. In addition, she implemented pension freezes which resulted in a one-time, $10 million positive balance sheet adjustment in the US, and returned the Canadian operating unit to profitability.

Cindy also provided strong guidance to the Graphic Packaging board’s nominating and governance committee and audit committee, most notably in executive compensation, employee engagement, and succession planning processes. She redesigned the executive compensation process to align with the organization’s new financial structure, the executive employment agreements for best practices within IRS and ISS standards, the executive retirement packages for the best strategic structure, and the Compensation and Benefits Charter to support the transformed organization.

In previous board service, Cindy played an integral role identifying two large scale European acquisitions at Graphic Packaging International Limited. At the Human Resources Leadership Forum, she served multiple years as the vice president of programming in addition to her board role. In the six years Cindy served on the regional board for the American Cancer Society, she led development of a business-centric strategy.

Cindy received a bachelor of science degree in organizational leadership from Purdue University and a master’s degree in management from Maryville College. A respected thought leader, she is published in the arenas of sustainability and corporate governance. Cindy and her husband, Chris, have two grown children and split their time between residences in Georgia and Southwest Florida.