Rochelle Kowalski
Rochelle Kowalski, a managing director with YesCFO, is an accomplished financial leader who is operationally focused. With her strong finance, accounting, and internal controls background and broad business knowledge, she partners with line executives to achieve business results. She has experience across diverse industries including regulated entities and has supported commercial and government sectors. She is adept at providing effective leadership to organizations starting-up or in transition. Rochelle can be hands-on, working through details and developing solutions one minute and presenting to Audit Committees and Boards the next.
Prior to joining YesCFO, Rochelle was the vice president of compliance at American Water, an over $2 billion water and wastewater company. Rochelle led the successful completion of the Company’s first official SOX year, including remediating a material weakness, and second year control rationalization, while reducing the cost of compliance. Also at American Water, Rochelle was regional vice president finance, supporting multiple regulated operating companies. Rochelle improved the accuracy of financial and management reporting and the planning/budgeting process. She implemented key controls across operating units, provided financial support for business development, and met/exceeded business plans. Rochelle completed multimillion-dollar tax exempt and low cost economic development financings. She successfully managed multiple rate cases and supported the Company’s IPO. Rochelle participated in multiple forums with senior leadership, including the CEO, Audit Committee, and operating company Boards.
Before American Water, Rochelle was at AES Corporation, an over $11 billion global power generation and distribution company. She was responsible for the company’s SOX program including over 70 reporting units across the globe, including the global implementation of a SOX software application.
Previously, Rochelle was a full-time consultant at Loral Skynet, a global satellite services company. Working with the business and the auditors, she successfully led all aspects of the SOX program for the first year of implementation through on-going compliance. She also led projects related to the legal entity structure, business combination financials, business plan integrity and supported bankruptcy emergence activities.
Earlier, Rochelle was with AT&T and Lucent Technologies. She held several operationally focused financial leadership positions, including being a CFO Business Partner to an AT&T Officer, routinely partnering with operational leadership to achieve business results. Rochelle gained experience in a wide range of products and services, manufacturing, mergers and acquisitions, product management, internal audit, and supporting the government sector. Rochelle made numerous contributions including successfully leading a multimillion-dollar restructure of assets – saving millions. She established operationally based forecasting, budgeting, and planning, resulting in improved accuracy and operational ownership, and integrated acquired companies. She led expense cutting initiatives, achieving significant savings. For a new integrated manufacturing and design facility, Rochelle determined and successfully implemented the financial infrastructure/systems, processes, and reporting.
Rochelle has a Masters degree with honors in Economics from Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut and a Bachelors degree magna cum laude from Russell Sage College in Troy, New York.
