Carol Armstrong

Carol has a broad base of Fortune 500 financial management and human resources experience. Throughout her career, she has led cross-functional teams to improve systems and processes that impacted financial performance and human capital development. Her most challenging assignment was serving as controller of AT&Ts Health and Welfare plans, which included managing over $1.5B of healthcare expenses, and coordinating the work of Payroll, Human Resources, finance organizations, lawyers, actuaries, health insurance companies, other vendors, and internal and external auditors. During her 22 years with AT&T, Carol also had opportunities to work with software developers to integrate cost-benefit algorithms into software used throughout AT&T. The application of these types of economic-value algorithms also facilitated an analysis of AT&T’s assets, resulting in a $6.8B write-off at divesture. Her work at AT&T in a post-divestiture environment made Carol acutely aware for the need for a career planning and workforce development program for the chief accountant’s organization to ensure employees could maximize their potential in this new environment. Given that Carol was also working on a master’s degree in counseling psychology at the time, she took advantage of the opportunity to create this program and use it to meet a degree requirement. While at AT&T, Carol became convinced that approaching issues and proposing solutions based on an understanding of the end-to end process was the only way to circumvent the silo mentality and limited understanding of downstream impacts inherent in too many organizations. She has continued to employ a process perspective as an independent consultant with small businesses and other nonprofit organizations, and in her current work with American Children’s Campaign.