Elizabeth Prout
Elizabeth is an experienced financial professional with over 30 years working in various industries, including start-ups, distribution, legal services, and manufacturing. She has extensive experience with start-up companies including textiles, telecom, and pharmaceuticals. Elizabeth has established accounting and reporting systems to produce timely financial statements, mentored and developed accounting teams to their fullest potential, and provided reporting to monitor KPI’s including utilization, project margins and average/hourly rates. She believes reporting to better predict future cash flows will give you the tools you need to fully manage the business and projects on time and budget.
Before joining CFO Selections, Elizabeth began her career with Tultex Corporation in her home state of Virginia before moving to North Carolina for 26 years, where she continued in the textile industry and led the team responsible for moving a newly acquired sister company and employees from Cleveland, OH to Greensboro, NC. While in Greensboro, NC, she worked for Abacon Telecommunications, who was 80% owned by a British Holding company. The Owners bought the company back and Elizabeth was responsible for getting them certified as a Women Owned business. Afterwards, she moved on to Toyo Thai International, a hosiery manufacturer, where she set up manufacturer’s representative offices in Thailand, Hong Kong and China. An opportunity with Universal Solutions telecom led Elizabeth to moving to Charleston, SC, where she assisted in selling them off to a publicly traded company in 7 months. From there she worked for a dermatologic pharmaceutical company for 10+ years, including selling the company to a Canadian publicly traded company. Elizabeth then moved to Seattle when that division was sold for a third time.
Elizabeth understands the key challenges expected at different stages of financial maturity and offers solutions to prepare for future obstacles. She instinctively selects the best options while being innovative, inventive, original and resourceful. Assisting with budgeting, forecasting and identifying growth opportunities, she helps the company to make informed decisions to achieve its financial goals. She fills the strategic leadership gap of financial modeling and identifying opportunities for savings and efficiencies. Elizabeth excels at finding the root cause to historical pain points, allowing existing finance staff to focus on day-to-day operations. She believes a group’s true strength lies in the diversity of its members’ knowledge, skills, motivations, work and thinking styles. She helps identify and mitigate financial risk by recommending appropriate controls, monitoring financial performance, and ensuring compliance with regulatory requirements. She can help manage cash flow effectively by analyzing financial statements, reporting on KPI’s, implementing cash flow projections, and suggesting measures to improve liquidity. If a company is considering mergers, acquisitions, or other strategic transactions, she can offer valuable insights into due diligence, financial assessments, and negotiation processes. She builds discipline into financial processes.
Elizabeth graduated from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University with a B.S in Accounting and furthered her education with an MBA from the University of NC at Greensboro with an emphasis in International Business. She currently lives in Everett, WA and enjoys competitive sailing, quilting, gardening, bee keeping, and cooking for friends.
