Linda Hester Email and Phone Number

-Primary liaison supporting Worldwide Marketing functions, specific to expense management. -Act as neutral challenger and support all ongoing reporting and planning processes for Global organization.-Partner with Marketing to own and drive financial performance while actively supporting the management team in the area of ROMI (Return on Marketing Investment); key goal of my role is to effectively work alongside business partners to achieve outcomes.-Analyze actual to planned variances and understand and communicate variance insights.-Provide trusted finance decision support, including regular and ad hoc analysis to key stakeholders, from individual contributor to Sr. functional leaders.-Emphasis on delivering insight into trends, risks and opportunities.-Actively collaborate with members of Accounting, Legal, Procurement, Treasury and Tax to ensure finance & accounting processes are executed and the function achieves its objectives.-Seek out ambiguity and clarify; identify areas lacking process clarity and provide solutions, escalate where required.

Consolidated and reported monthly expense and forecast results for global marketing organization. Developed financial models and metrics including long term forecasts and key measurement ratios and graphs via dashboard delivery. Leader in direct marketing initiatives and advertising agency liaison activities. - Creation of leadership reporting enabled quick decisions regarding risks, enablers and results of various management scenarios to meet expense spending challenges. - Within first 8 months of taking over role, full-year actual to allocated spend differential was pulled in from 21% to 2% of budget. - Designed and executed direct marketing campaign initiative highlighting Nortel as a provider of goods and services in the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics. Goodwill messaging successfully reached all 82 global and partner accounts with leadership accolades resonating in 3rd Quarter Business Review.

Provided senior-level financial support in the area of complex product revenue and margin forecasting. Partner with Enterprise Corporate Accounts organization providing financial analysis, support and guidance on revenue and margin expectations on a quarter-by-quarter basis. - Improved forecasting variance by 10% within the first year of managing this role by engaging and leading a cross-functional team and incorporating new reporting content and data accessibility into forecasting process. - Detailed report development distributed to both Federal and Corporate Account management sectors improved forecasting efficiencies by 45% as standardized data was utilized across all functional areas. - Expertise in revenue recognition compliance related to complex projects. Proficient with the application of FASB SOP 97-2, SOP 81-1, EITF 00-21.

Responsible for implementing North America Sales Incentive Compensation Plan and establishing and tracking quota for 150 account salespeople and engineers within the Carrier, Enterprise and Channel organizations. Managed commission payouts for major account teams in excess of $8M in a fiscal year. - Reconciled commission details to within 1% of monthly financial results reporting for both orders and revenue in 2005 which resulted in a $300k year-over-year improvement. - Business process owner in Sarbanes-Oxley compliance initiative. Ensured controls were in place during the establishment and validation of North America customer sales hierarchy within the commission system. - As a result of an audit comment, developed a training program to educate compensation managers and analysts on the appropriate application of manual adjustments within the sales compensation system.

Responsible for processing and tracking customer product trial opportunities in excess of $5M in any given quarter for over 250 field sales representatives. Managed purchase and change order activity as well as job scheduling for the North America sales organization. - Increased revenue by $4.5M by analyzing and auditing software buyouts to ensure that contract terms and conditions were achieved and that billing and collections were completed according to contract terms. - Developed a more consistent purchasing process between Nortel and its customers. The customer moved from a facsimile-ordering approach to an online ordering process that increased order placement efficiency by 40%.

Responsible for classroom instruction and post-training support of corporate and private sector individuals in the area of software application use. - Developed a custom software instruction manual for the Wake County Public School Administration so as to foster a consistent training protocol in the Microsoft Application Suite. - Responsible for mastering and presenting a new software application every 3-4 months.