Maria Markusen
President – Chief Executive Officer
Entrepreneurially Oriented ✦ Solution-Focused ✦ Grounding Presence
The consummate C-level management professional with a notable record of repeated success guiding startups and established firms from across healthcare, tech, and CPG through turnaround, go-to-market, and growth offensives building brand image, expanding customer bases, and changing business models to meet market demands. Ingenious and resourceful at securing financing, aligning positive channel partnerships and transforming financial performance.
Driving Business Process Excellence to Ensure Top-Line Expansion Becomes Bottom-Line Growth
Knowledgeable and skilled enhancing manufacturing facility, supply-chain sufficiency, and work-environment vitality. A talented communicator, gifted mentor, valued counselor, and dynamic leader of cross-functional teams able to draw colleagues from all levels together in dedication to meeting challenging objectives. Respected, trusted, and depended upon to produce significant ROI in consequential situations.
Visionary leader with a tenacity for repair and renewal. Strategist, with a track record of broadly envisioning possibilities, listening well to and then considering alternatives, and unhesitatingly making bold decisions, confidently accepting responsibility for those choices. Admired for integrity and dedication while achieving optimal outcomes for all impacted from customers and suppliers to executive level stakeholders, to front line employees. Gregarious, builds collaborative, solutions minded relationships and vibrant interconnected environments and cultures.
Omaha, NE
(402) 670.2321
mcmarkusen@gmail.com
Peripheral Insight. Financial Reward.
Views what is ahead as if from a high level. Visualizes with remarkable perspective, fostering superior decisions. Results-oriented; develops and implements practical solutions leading to unexpectedly rewarding outcomes and better than expected financial results.
Paradigm Shifter.
Sees the present in terms of its possibility for the future. Magnetic and focused leader who attracts others, demonstrating a model of captaincy worthy of emulation. Establishes an inviting enthusiastic energy that is refreshing and awakening. Arouses even the most resistant influencers to evaluate and consider novel slants. Incredible method for bringing people together with different strengths, personalities, and passions, with a flair for coaching in how to work together for growth and change.
Principled. Decisive.
Leads first from a perspective strongly aligned with personal standards. Effectively defines and communicates values to facilitate understanding and encourage acceptance and market confidence. A master decision maker – agile, thoughtful, and nimble; standing behind those decisions.
Encourages healthy debate. Influences.
Adapts to rapidly changing conditions with vigor, tenacity, and mindfulness. Strong delegation skills allow for each team member to blossom, providing their best individual expertise in an effective manner.
High Level Thinker. Curious.
A thirst to understand the why, the root cause, the interconnection to the whole and the whole big picture. Gathers information from internal stakeholders, market patterns, experts inside and outside the industry, multiple media sources and then connects back to the vision, the strategy, the purpose, and the company roadmap resulting in big, shifting outcomes and progress.
Achievements
Work History
A $30 million soap, beauty, and bath products manufacturer supplying grocery, major retailers and membership warehouses.
Board Member | 2017 – 2022
President | 2020 – 2022
Responsible for strategic direction and oversight of daily operations. Led a team of 100+ with 15 direct reports.
- $12 million in additional equity and debt financing garnered, 67% from existing shareholders, by hiking profitability, enlarging production volume, and improving messaging about vision and reengineering.
- 300% surge realized in major retail outlets served by promoting unique product features, a US manufacturing site, and rapid, complete supply accompanied by utilization of an in-store product-placement service.
- 275% boost in shareholder value to $55 million generated by introducing a vision and plan for growth and restructuring the senior management team to incorporate positions required for success.
- 17 percentage-point EBITDA spike nourished by modifying product formulas, changing suppliers, eliminating vendors, introducing analytics, offering bonuses, and as controller cutting overhead and corporate expenses.
- 98% on-time-in-full delivery rate achieved in three months from a starting point of 15%, while adding 5,200 customer locations, by tightening cost controls, introducing daily reporting, providing access to analytics through updated dashboards, and expanding communications company wide.
- 92 truckloads fulfilling a leading mass merchandiser’s first order developed afresh and shipped in 30 days in addition to adjusting to unusual FDA requirements and overcoming the most restricted supply chain in 50+ years.
- Doubled production capacity by purchasing and equipping a manufacturing facility using no-interest state and city loans, eliminating third-party producers, and holding labor-cost increases to only 10%.
- 7% shrink in shipping costs earned by formulating a proprietary analytics tool that helped carriers surmount transportation limitations and assisting with development of methods for controlling distribution expenses.
$200+ million national organization comprised of 30+ business units and a 1,000-member workforce providing franchising, consulting, logistics, and management services to 25,000 healthcare businesses and organizations.
Chief Operating Officer / Director of Development
Dual role leader. First as VGM’s C-suite corporate internal strategist, integrator, M&A expert, and company trainer. And second the industry’s subject-matter expert, industry speaker, writer, liaison, and interim leader for patient centered growth businesses in VGM’s healthcare portfolio and 7,800 member businesses.
Integrator: Resident expert for our own C-suite team and 7,800 members. Ongoing project leader on the integration of acquisitions (5) into the shared service model of VGM including the initial folding of 27 business units into one shared service model and consulting on 120 M&A transactions for our members.
Go-to-Market Strategist: Developed a new suite of products and services helping franchisees, portfolio companies and entrepreneur leaders prepare strategies for shifting business models in response to market changes while also lending expertise to grow company’s core DME business. Negotiated Simply Shops acquisition by VGM group, bringing 2,800 new customers.
Growth Expert: Grew a company selling to 550 hospitals into a $22 million enterprise servicing 7,000 multi-discipline healthcare providers and millions of patients by shifting the business paradigm to a franchise model, signing 182 extra members with 300 locations, and introducing $9.7 million in new products and services.
Transformational Growth Strategy: Devised firm wide tool used by 7K member customers that assesses, strategizes, and executes change and growth strategies during volatile industry shifts from government and 3rd party payer changes, growing revenue on average 30% per member and saving 100+ businesses from closing doors.
CxO Advisory Leadership: Directed team serving as strategic advisors to over 7K healthcare CxOs spanning hospitals, specialty clinics, pharmacies, DME stores, elder care services, and VGM’s other retail and distribution business entities.
Continuum-of-Care Thought Leader: Coined “Caretail,” a term embraced as norm by industry and journalists alike to describe selling in a healthcare environment. Championed paradigm shift benefiting patients and healthcare systems alike to audiences at annual conferences and readers of leading healthcare publications.
Provided assisted living, memory care, and independent living services in 200+ communities nationwide through 1,800 employees. Revenues topped $250 million.
Vice President – Sales & Marketing
Headed promotional and customer-development activities for a $78 million division encompassing 2,000 units in 37 locations across six states with a management team of 42 executive directors.
- 570% surge in occupancy rates to 86% across 1,022 locations attained by devising and directing execution of a maturation program that encompassed simultaneous improvement in sales, customer service, and operations.
- Facilitated the firm’s private-equity sale by fulfilling C-suite-assigned responsibility to attractively position the company through framing of an action plan that raised performance in 10,000 units, extolling turnaround successes to prospective buyers, and providing senior management with data and case studies used in presentations.
- Restored operating licenses for 47 locations and cut turnover 240% by composing and administering a system-wide upgrade in procedures, conducting unit-by-unit training, and promoting results through a nationwide PR effort.
Gift and ancillary services franchise located in 500+ hospitals and clinics generating $550 million in annual proceeds.
Chief Operating Officer
Managed product development and delivery, financing, human resources, vendor relations, franchisee additions, and daily operations for a 200-store network through a cadre of 15 vice presidents.
- $15 million in incremental top line gained by leveraging decreases in traditional payor fees to drive a successful shift in the company’s business to a more forthright retailing model.
- 35% sales growth in 500 hospital gift shops contributed by converting the business model from overhead expense to profit center. Saved an average of $12,500 per patient and lowered employee turnover.
REIT-owned, $54 million, nationwide provider of assisted and independent living, memory care, and skilled nursing in 329 communities that employed 32,000.
Cluster Sales Manager & Executive-Director Mentor
Directed integration of a major competitor’s properties and supervised daily performance of six regional managers, three operational leaders, and executive directors of 40 communities in six states.
- $20,000 per-month-per-location labor savings reached by installing a productivity program designed around findings from research conducted with staff, families, residents, and the connected clinical community.
- Gained senior management’s approval to restart the opening of additional locations by doubling sales from units recovering from a tarnished image, efficiently building three greenfield locations, installing a best-practices program company-wide, and assimilating 126 acquired units.
- Restored the company’s tarnished local image by improving the quality of care in response to an invited state-run corrective survey and piloting a PR plan that promoted the changes and strengthened community connections.
- Spurred the region’s first profitable year in five, doubled occupancy in disparaged facilities, truncated bad debts 175%, and created and conducted a mentor program that trained 300+ executive directors in the techniques used.
- $48 million first-of-its-kind business developed by expanding from one location to 15 in two years, seeking out and securing unique government and private financial instruments, and changing the range and nature of services available in the local market.
Education & Professional Development
Bachelor of Arts in History; minor in Literature & French, Carthage College
Post Graduate Certificate in Contracts & Business Legal Studies, MN Paralegal Institute
Seminar Presenter, MedTrade, NHIA, Heartland, Essentially – Women, MAMES & HOMES, OAMES, BIG SKY, HME New England, CAMES, Great Lakes, Northeast MEPA, PAMS, Texas MEPA
Featured Guest & Contributor, HME News, American Hospital Association, Modern Healthcare, Homecare Magazine
Fund Raising / Academic Performance Enhancement Support, Carthage College • Artist’s Business Boot Camp, Omaha Creative Institute • Pro Bono Business-Growth Consulting, Brobe International, Inc., Sholdit, Inc.