Chris Howard

Known for his ability to optimize people, processes, finance, and data management solutions, Chris has played an integral role in driving transformational cost savings and bottom-line improvements. His diverse expertise enables him to work collaboratively between finance operations, information technology, and procurement teams and rally them around shared organizational goals and project expectations. Chris takes great pride in building and developing top talent and positioning organizations for success.

Throughout all his roles, Chris has built a track record of excellence. He began his career at Pearson PLC, where he honed his cross-functional leadership and problem-solving skills, driving significant organizational restructuring initiatives, mergers and acquisitions, and technology implementations. He leveraged his strong technical acumen and his forward-thinking mindset to influence significant cost savings, spearheading the consolidation of 65 enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems into 1 unified platform, which generated $60M in annual cost savings.

Chris joined Promin Technologies in 2017, where he guided the growth and development of the finance function of the boutique technology, finance, and operations consulting firm operating in three countries. He acted as a strategic partner to the CEO and COO, optimizing strategic planning and ensuring the achievement of key company objectives. By spearheading the development of key performance indicators, Chris held third-party contractors accountable to established deliverable timelines and other expectations, reducing development cycles by 25% and cost overruns by 30%. Adept at simplifying complex issues and persuasively articulating concepts using data, Chris won buy-in to lead significant technology integrations, including relocating the internal data center to AWS cloud-based service. This generated a 35% increase in EBIT and a 20% decrease in overall IT expenditures due to automation.

In his most recent position at Lazard, Chris enhanced financial reporting and budgeting capabilities for one of the world's most admired independent investment banks and managed the global IT infrastructure group. He contributed immense value to the organization, introducing a comprehensive project database that empowered teams to maximize consulting expenditures and potential tax write-offs. Leveraging his outstanding organizational and project management skills and his ability to form trust-based relationships, Chris coordinated with IT partners to initiate proactive real-time course corrections by modernizing reporting methods. As a result of his leadership, reporting timelines were reduced from 45 days to 24–48 hours and inactive or obsolete contracts were eliminated, enabling him to improve P&L and identify opportunities for further reductions.