Blythe McGarvie is a Senior Lecturer and teaches the MBA required curriculum course Financial Reporting and Control at Harvard Business School. McGarvie has operated profitable business units and managed employees in business endeavors from China to Chile, France to Finland. She serves as a member of the boards of directors of Accenture, Viacom, Wawa and LKQ and formerly served on the boards of Travelers Insurance, Pepsi Bottling Group and Lafarge NA.
Blythe McGarvie is a Senior Lecturer and teaches the MBA required curriculum course Financial Reporting and Control at Harvard Business School. McGarvie has operated profitable business units and managed employees in business endeavors from China to Chile, France to Finland. She serves as a member of the boards of directors of Accenture, Viacom, Wawa and LKQ and formerly served on the boards of Travelers Insurance, Pepsi Bottling Group and Lafarge NA. In the prior ten years, Ms. McGarvie served as Chief Executive Officer and Founder of Leadership for International Finance (LIF Group), offering a global perspective to clients seeking profitable growth. LIF Group offers tailor-made consulting services and leadership seminars for corporate and academic groups. While leading LIF Group, she wrote two books and numerous articles. Her best-selling book, Shaking the Globe: Courageous Decision-Makers in a Changing World (published by John Wiley & Sons in 2009) provides entrepreneurs and executives with research and action ideas to overcome obstacles in a competitive and interconnected world. She is the author of Fit In Stand Out: Mastering the FISO Factor: The Key to Leadership Effectiveness in Business and Life (published by McGraw-Hill in 2005). This book has reached wide distribution in the U.S. and published in Spanish, Indian and Russian language versions.
In 2012, she accepted the invitation to join the Audit Committee Learning Network, a group of Audit Committee Chairs of American and European companies with revenues of $10 billion or more. Ms. McGarvie currently chairs the audit committees for Viacom and LKQ and the compensation committee for Wawa, Inc. In 2010 and 2008, NACD/Directorship selected Ms. McGarvie as one of the “Top 100 Most Renowned and Influentials in Corporate Governance”. In December 2009, Ms. McGarvie received an Honorary Doctorate in Humane Letters from Old Dominion University where she gave the commencement speech in 2010.
McGarvie is renowned for her perspective on leadership decision-making, corporate governance and worldwide economic trends. McGarvie’s prior academic appointments are as Senior Fellow for Northwestern University’s Kellogg Innovation Network, a faculty member of Duke Corporate Education and Visiting Leader at Shanghai-based CEIBS. Prior to founding LIF Group, McGarvie was a pioneering CFO serving as one of only ten female CFOs in the Fortune 500 in 1995. Ms. McGarvie was Senior Vice-President and Chief Financial Officer of Hannaford Bros. Co., a Fortune 500 company, acquired by the DelHaize Group in 1999. In that year, Ms. McGarvie was named Chief Financial Officer of BIC Group, a French company traded on the Euronext, famous for its pens, lighters and shavers. Her international experience includes her four years in Paris France for BIC Group and earlier years spent as Chief Administrative Officer – Pacific Rim for 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.
Ms. McGarvie is a Certified Public Accountant. She earned an MBA from Northwestern University’s J.L. Kellogg Graduate School of Management, which selected her for the Schaffner Award in 1992, presented annually to an alumnus (a) who is pre-eminent in his or her field and who provided outstanding service to Kellogg. She earned an Advanced Professional Director certification from the American College of Corporate Directors in 2012. She is a member of numerous non-profit organizations including the Lyric Opera of Chicago Board of Directors, The Chicago Network, NACD (National Association of Corporate Directors) and CIVIC Institute, in Norfolk, Virginia.