Melissa A. Craig Overview

Melissa Craig is a corporate turnaround executive who specializes in companies that have a sense of urgency about improving their performance.  She leads or co-leads the renewal efforts of companies who:

• are healthy and want to stay ahead of the curve, or

• suspect they are underperforming but don’t know how to identify or fix the problems, or

• know they are in distress and need someone to step into the crisis and do triage.  

Ms. Craig has 12 years of experience as CEO / CFO / Director, having founded one company, General Telecom, and growing it to 50 employees in New York, LA and Miami.  This company was subsequently sold to a NYSE-listed company for $30 million.  She has also overseen the turnaround and acquisition of another technology company by a NASDAQ-listed company, and continues to work with senior decision-makers and boards to take the steps necessary to reverse decline.   

Ms. Craig won the 2000 Ernst & Young ‘Entrepreneur of the Year’ award in New York City for her work with General Telecom.  In addition to her operating experience, she has training in the disciplines that underlie the practice of turnaroun management -- accounting, finance, quantitative analysis and organizational behavior.  She graduated magna cum laude from Bentley University, just outside Boston, with a BS in Corporate Finance and Accounting, and in graduated in 2010 from The George Washington University School of Business with a MS in Accountancy.

The experience of working with underperforming and distressed companies, coupled with her training in the field of turnaround management, led Melissa to conceptualize and develop the Corporate Renewal Timeline and the ‘Practical Turnaround Management’ website:  

"Among the first three tools a turnaround manager reaches for at the beginning of an engagement are: 1) analyze the early warning signs, 2) cut working capital, and 3) create weekly cash forecasts and budgets.  After the turnaround team finishes the analysis and presents the findings, the company's managers and directors always agree that they wish they'd done the work we just did -- tracking the early warning signs, cutting the working capital and maintaining tighter cash controls -- one year ago when they had more time and money to fix the problems.  

"The Corporate Renewal Timeline is a visual aid to help management and directors really see the relationship between underperformance, distress and crisis.  The timeline shows that taking the right actions today delivers better results than denial and inaction. 

"The "Practical Turnaround Management" website focuses on core turnaround tools because doing these things every day is how 21^st century management teams can stay ahead of the curve." 

• Know the early warning signs and your key performance metrics, and keep a constant eye on them;
• Reduce working capital to its absolute minimum; and
• Maintain tight controls over cash.

Of course there is much more to successfully turning around a viable company.  But just incorporating these activities into a company's standard operations cannot help but improve performance and, ultimately, create value.  This is Practical Turnaround Management.

Management teams, boards of directors and lenders who need to discuss an underperforming or distressed company should contact Melissa Craig for an informal conversation.

 LinkedIn resume