Cathy Fischer

Cathy Fischer is speaker, executive, and Ohio native who embodies the Midwestern values of hard work, common sense, and authenticity.

With a combination of marketing, general management, and operations roles in her career, Fischer is an executive marketer with a strong bias for delivering financial results. Her career began at P&G, where she went directly from college and spent 14 years in Brand Management. She honed her classic marketing skills on household brand names such as Pantene, Head & Shoulders, and Crest. Her last position with Procter & Gamble was General Manager of the $200 million Max Factor Cosmetics business.

Fischer then applied her marketing skills to durable goods. She held roles as VP of Marketing at Rubbermaid, global CMO at Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company, and VP of Marketing for AkzoNobel, the world's largest coatings company. Across these positions, she proved the ability to grow sales, profit, and market share in multiple industries, and within both growing and declining business conditions.

In 2008, Fischer became General Manager of AkzoNobel's $500 million U.S. business with The Home Depot, holding full P&L responsibility, and leading a 400 person field sales force. Also at AkzoNobel, she was Chief Product Officer, with responsibility to build the long term product strategy and cost structure changes required to deliver that strategy within the U.S. Decorative Coatings business.

In 2014, Fischer returned to a classic Marketing role with Signet Jewelers, the largest specialty jewelry retailer in the US whose brands include Kay Jewelers, Jared The Galleria of Jewelry, Zales, and Piercing Pagoda, among others. She is currently the SVP of Marketing for Signet.

Beyond the span of Marketing and Operational roles across so many industries, Fischer has intentionally cultivated the ability to deliver business results required today, while also establishing the processes that can make those results sustainable. She has developed this skill throughout her career, including creating organizations from the ground up, building new organizational capability, and implementing new product development and financial processes.

Fischer graduated with honors from Miami University of Ohio in 1983 with a Bachelor of Science in Business Management and a Bachelor of Arts in English, and earning a Summa cum Laude academic distinction. She currently lives in North Eastern Ohio with her husband, Dr. David Fischer, a Senior Physicist at NASA, and their four children.