Gary Correia is currently the Vice President Finance of Taylor Guitars as well as the President of Financial Executives International, San Diego Chapter. He leads a wonderful personal life as well as professional career. He was born and raised in Point Loma/Ocean Beach, CA and is proud to call himself a native San Diegan. He has also been married for 21 years, and is currently raising two children. His son is a junior here at the University of San Diego and is pursuing a Mechanical Engineering Degree. His daughter is a junior at Academy of Our Lady of Peace High School. In his free time he enjoys outdoor activities such as snow skiing, camping, and bike riding. He has been very successful at balancing a rewarding career as well as a personal life.

His educational background includes being a Certified Public Accountant – State of California, obtaining a Bachelor of Science Degree in Business Administration/Accounting from SDSU 1980, as well as Continuing Professional Education (CPE) at > 75 hours/year. He is an innovative thinker and is involved with strategic planning at all levels.

In his current role as Vice President Finance of Taylor Guitars, he has managed a tremendous growth period far exceeding industry norms.  He has overall responsibility for finance, accounting, legal, insurance, banking, benefits, auditors, and regulatory issues. He also serves a strong advisory position as part of the “management team.”  He has been directly responsible for many changes & improvements resulting in substantial savings to the company as a whole. While in this role, he also Co-Founded a music industry credit group that became largest in the nation through Experian. He also Founded music manufactures industry CFO group that continues to expand enthusiasts.

Gary Correia was destined for a life of leadership when he was the youngest member ever selected to the Executive/Operations Committee for Petrolane, Inc.  He presented the results of operations for 14 national and international subsidiaries totaling 2 billion in annual revenues to corporate and divisional presidents, vice presidents and other senior executives. He was then selected as Petrolane, Inc. Corporate Liaison for Texas Eastern Corp., which was a new parent company of 6 billion in annual revenues. In this position, he had extensive interaction with executive management while divesting/transferring the corporate departments from Long Beach, California to Houston, Texas.

Mr. Correia also initiated and controlled mergers of several subsidiaries, while managing day to day operations.  He was also involed in re-engineering several subsidiaries and parent company into an efficient corporate structure.

He was able to successfully negotiate substantial increases in lines of credit, during economic downturn. This was particularly difficult but he was able to be successful by having many negotiation skills in his back pocket. He was even able to discover a new methodology to increase foreign investments by 100% with same risk.

Due to his exceptional leadership skills, he managed all aspects of several subsidiaries for six months, including finance, administration, sales, marketing, purchasing, engineering, quality, production scheduling and manufacturing, while Board was searching for new president. He then replaced Chairman of the Board to conduct annual shareholders meeting of a publicly held company.

Since 1981, he has established multiple new procedures for several companies, which increased labor and cost efficiencies for products and services. This type of thinking and innovation is what ultimately landed him at Taylor Guitars so that he could reproduce these cost efficiencies and take a greater overall market share in the high end acoustic guitar market.

He has established many financial cost saving programs, which increased cash flow, reduced “DSO”, dramatically increased insurance coverage at reduced cost, saved in excess of $100,000 in sales tax from “hidden” tax codes, and recovered $1.5 million in tax refunds from prior years due to retroactive changes in tax laws. His efforts in this area really paid off in actual dollar savings for the company. As a leader, he also has enough time to directly supervise 125 employees, as well as the management team. He is truly and inspirational leader, and if you would like to meet him or are interested in Financial Executives International, please join us for the FEI/MSEL Breakfast freaturing Garry Ridge on May 8, 2008. Please see more information under the events listing of this newsletter.