Aref A.

Aref A. Email and Phone Number

Strategy Execution| Financial Literacy | Chief Executive Officer | Chief Financial Officer | Operational Focus | CPA | Data Driven | Learning all the time. @ CEC
Irving, Texas, United States
Aref A.'s Location
Celina, Texas, United States, United States
Aref A.'s Contact Details

Aref A. work email

About Aref A.

I strive to be a better person and leader every day. The goal is to be better than yesterday. I can rattle some of my accomplishments by saying that:- I have a BS in Accounting and an MS in Information systems.- I hold CPA certification.- I have worked for fortune 500 companies.- I have over 20 plus years of experience.- I have failed at some jobs and learned from my mistakes.- I have moved cross-industry with success.- I moved up the ladder and became CEO.- I am good at strategic planning and execution.- I sold a company during the 2020 pandemic.- I have the unique skill of being detail-oriented and a big picture guy.- I have the resume to prove it. But the thing is, “THE MORE I LEARN, THE MORE I KNOW, HOW LITTLE I KNOW.” At this junction, it is all about the People. So, what am I doing to improve myself to become a better person and help others?- It starts with “know thyself.” Understanding my strengths and opportunities. To know me better, I have taken multiple behavioral surveys (DISC, Culture Index, Think-X, Winslow).- I have created my own rules to help me with my behavior and /or identify circumstances, so I act accordingly.- I read a lot about leadership, management, and human behavior.- I try to stay UpToDate with current affairs and technology as much as possible. - I admit my fault as soon as I realize it.- I listen with my brain and try to internalize them.- I try to create an environment where we can talk about things we disagree on.- I document my experiences so I can learn from them.- I belong to a CEO group to improve. - I coach and mentor.- I work hard; however, I like to have fun as well (family time, long drives, music, food, travel, movies, hanging with friends, to name a few) I am a trusted and highly accomplished CEO with extensive experience in operations leadership, turnaround management, and revenue growth. I have a real passion for helping large and small companies improve processes, reduce expenses and drive EBITDA through vision and implementation. Let’s connect if we share the same interests. Aref☎ 817-734-8917Email: aref.ali101@gmail.comCEO | Finance & Operations Focused | Strategic Planning & Execution | Process Improvement & Optimization | Board Advisor & Member | Business Transformation | Revenue & EBITDA Growth

Aref A.'s Current Company Details
CEC

Cec

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Strategy Execution| Financial Literacy | Chief Executive Officer | Chief Financial Officer | Operational Focus | CPA | Data Driven | Learning all the time.
Irving, Texas, United States
Aref A. Work Experience Details
  • Cec
    Cec
    Irving, Texas, United States
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  • Cec
    Chief Strategy Officer (Cso)
    Cec May 2023 - Present
    Irving, Texas, Us
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  • Panorama
    Advisor To Chief Executive Officer
    Panorama Jul 2022 - Present
    Celina, Texas, Us
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  • Sealco
    Chief Executive Officer
    Sealco Dec 2017 - Jun 2022
    Richardson, Tx, Us
    Responsible for providing strategic, finance and operational guidance to the organization. Drove organizational improvements and enhancements through the implementation of best practices, which resolved multiple sales, marketing, HR, financial, operations challenges and motivates staff to peak performance.✓ CFO to CEO: Promoted to CEO when the company was going through a leadership crisis, low morale, high employee turnover causing the business to collapse.✓ Strategy execution: Used a hybrid approach to create a strategic plan with the team in a very short amount of time. A detailed execution plan was created based on the strategy. ✓ Building team and morale: Started monthly management meetings to foster transparency. The strategic plan, execution plan, and monthly results were shared with the management and staff during the meetings.✓ Accountability and process improvement: Team was encouraged to share ideas and challenge each other throughout the organization. SMART goals were used to assign tasks and follow-up creating accountability among the team.✓ Talent upgrade: Performed gap analysis for the talent required based on short and long-term goals. Created a training matrix for team members, hire new talent and reassigned employees based on skillset.✓ Marketing and market expansion: Analyzed market trends for growth opportunities. Invest in those markets for growth. Recruited a B2B marketing company to work with the team.✓ Customer-centric - Launched companywide customer-centric mindset. Team members were encouraged to visit customers on a regular basis to show our appreciation and to understand customer’s expectations. ✓ IT roadmap: Worked with the third party to map out IT strategy for the future. ✓ Board Collaboration: Worked and communicated with the board to re-establish the baseline. ✓ Enterprise Value: Increased enterprise value from $4.0M to $10.0M or 150% over 2016 based on EBITDA. The gross margin improved from 38% to 46%.
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  • Bick Group
    Chief Executive Officer
    Bick Group Jul 2013 - Jun 2020
    St. Louis, Missouri, Us
    Sealco is part of Bick Group.
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  • Bick Group
    Cfo
    Bick Group Jan 2015 - Dec 2017
    St. Louis, Missouri, Us
    Responsible for overseeing the overall accounting process, month-end closing, budgeting and forecasting, and monthly reporting process with variance analysis, and cash management.✓ Day to day and Month-end accounting process: Responsible for day to day accounting activities, approving checks/wire, reviewing A/R collections, daily cash, payroll, commission calculation, to name a few. Ensuring books are closed timely and accurately. Accruals and reserves are properly stated and reconciled. ✓ Financial Reporting: Responsible for creating department level P&L with variance analysis for the management team to help decision making.✓ Annual budget and quarterly forecast guidance: Lead the annual budgeting process in conjunction with the department heads. Also, provide quarterly guidance including cash flow projection to the management and the board.✓ Corporate relationship: Maintain a relationship with the bank and interact with the outside auditor for tax and annual audit. Review health insurance, general liabilities insurance, and 401K fund offerings with the outside broker. ✓ Margin Improvement: create a new bid approval process that included major cost categories in a summary format to ensure margins are maintained while maintaining competitiveness.✓ Postmortem of the jobs: implemented a process to evaluate jobs after completion thus improving the future bidding.✓ Job costing: Created an easy to read a work-in-progress report that highlights profitability by jobs and % of completion.Special Projects:o Revenue per full-time employee: Introduced the concept of revenue per full-time employee to justify adding new employees. This concept also helped to identify inefficiency in the system yielding annualized savings of $750K o Billing rate analysis: Evaluated billing rate including overhead and corporate allocation and proposed a new rate that was unchanged over five years, an estimated revenue increase of $600K.
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  • Bick Group
    Controller
    Bick Group Jul 2013 - Dec 2017
    St. Louis, Missouri, Us
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  • Johnny G’S
    Co-Owner - Cajun Restaurant
    Johnny G’S Jul 2012 - Jul 2015
    Investor and silent partner for the restaurant. Responsible for menu pricing based on the cost of ingredients and customer demand. Created menu design and marketing plan. Closed the restaurant in 2015 due to highway construction reduced the customer flow.
  • Michaels Store
    Finance Director – Financial Planning And Analysis
    Michaels Store Apr 2008 - Nov 2012
    Responsible for overseeing the corporate budgeting process, monthly forecasting, and 5-year strategic plan. Enabled organizational alignment between sales, inventory and DC expenses. Created a contingency plan and delivered “early warning system” for budget variations to senior management.• Annual budgeting process: In charge of rolling up the total company budget. Responsibility includes creating a timeline, setting targets, sending out budget templates, enforcing inter-departmental alignment, ensuring project related savings are reflected in the plan, challenging the organization to meet the target and reviewing the budget with the business partners and CFO.• 5 Year Strategic Plan: Helped the CEO with rolling out an annual comprehensive five-year strategic plan. Responsibility included; sending out a simple but robust template to the strategy team to capture the financial data, keeping the teams aligned with regular communication and rolling up full financials including detailed P&L, Balance Sheet and Cash Flow model for five years. • Monthly variance analysis and board prep: Created monthly Dashboard for CEO’s direct reports and a separate P&L by entity view for month-end review with directors and above. Provided detail month-end variance analysis, talking points and Board presentation to CFO. • Contingency Plan: Provided guidance to senior management regarding the down case in relation to the economy downturn. Identified the areas of control that could help get the company back to the original plan. • Inventory Planning: Helped inventory management with the complete picture of inventory position by capturing the inventory in transits, i.e., DC to store, vendor to store and store to store inventory. Ensured inventory planning aligns with the current sales plan. • Leadership and Mentoring: Aligned company objectives with each member of the FP&A team. Conducted team touch-base and individual one-on-one meetings once a week to ensure alignment.
  • Radioshack Corporation – Fort Worth, Tx
    Finance Director Business Operation
    Radioshack Corporation – Fort Worth, Tx Jan 2000 - Apr 2008
    Responsible for supporting Merchandising group with total revenue of $4.2 billion. Assist in the preparation of various analyses for Merchandise Vice President (MVP) and Senior Management. Assist buyers and inventory planner in annual and strategic plans and long-range forecasts. Also, acting as a go to person between VP of Finance and Business Operation Finance Directors.• Budgeting: Took a lead position in the budgeting process. Helped create a target for the entire Merchandising Group. Created budget review templates for senior management. • Private Label vs. National Brand: Performed a comprehensive analysis of Private Label vs. National Brand to identify a shift in margin due to change in sales mix. Provided opportunities to review our product mix.• Black Friday performance review: Helped create reports identifying success and opportunities with our current black Friday items. Used this report in the business review meeting with senior management to decide future course.• Monthly Reporting: Created reports and analyzed sales mix for monthly business review for senior management. • Top-down target setting for the annual budget: Provided target setting guidance to senior management based on historical data, market trend, and advertisement spent.• Bottoms up plan roll-up: Assisted buyers and inventory planner to create an item/SKU level plan. Later helped merchandising group to reconcile the top down and bottoms up plan.• Inventory management: Helped buyers to manage product lifecycle by identifying slow-moving items, potential inventory problems, overage or shortage, and obsolete items. Maintain inventory obsolescence reserve for proper financial statements value. • Other activities: Assisted MVP and buyers with assortment rationalization, new business plan, markdown, clearance and sell thru of product to maximize profit. Also provided a cost-benefit analysis of removing the product from stores vs. sell through.

Aref A. Skills

Retail Management Analysis Merchandising Time Management Inventory Management Store Management Forecasting Sales Income Statement Customer Service Cpfr Negotiation Budgets Strategic Planning Strategy Advertising Finance Visual Merchandising Marketing Inventory Control Profit

Aref A. Education Details

  • The University Of Texas At Arlington
    The University Of Texas At Arlington
    General
  • University Of North Texas
    University Of North Texas
    Accounting

Frequently Asked Questions about Aref A.

What company does Aref A. work for?

Aref A. works for Cec

What is Aref A.'s role at the current company?

Aref A.'s current role is Strategy Execution| Financial Literacy | Chief Executive Officer | Chief Financial Officer | Operational Focus | CPA | Data Driven | Learning all the time..

What is Aref A.'s email address?

Aref A.'s email address is pr****@****hoo.com

What schools did Aref A. attend?

Aref A. attended The University Of Texas At Arlington, University Of North Texas.

What skills is Aref A. known for?

Aref A. has skills like Retail, Management, Analysis, Merchandising, Time Management, Inventory Management, Store Management, Forecasting, Sales, Income Statement, Customer Service, Cpfr.

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