Maureen has been an integral part of Scholastic since 2007. She utilized her strong finance and operations background, built from her previous publishing & direct marketing experience, in the $2 billion global children’s publishing, education & media company. Since joining the company, she has partnered with all business units resulting in better-aligned support functions. The company-wide budgeting, capital allocation processes, and forecasting have vastly improved under her expertise. The development of a pricing strategy across the business units was also led by O’Connell. She guided the company to an increase in efficiencies and reduced costs by over $40 million in operations, finance, supply chain, IT and benefits. Due to her efforts, all supply chain, purchasing & manufacturing activities across the company are now centralized. O’Connell created an integrated strategic and financial planning process, including the development of 3-year plans by business.