Meredith W. Mendes

Meredith W. Mendes is the current director at Quanex Building Products. Prior to this, they were with KRONOS Worldwide, Inc. and Jenner & Block.

Meredith has over 15 years of experience in strategic initiatives, implementing systems, increasing profit, and improving finance, technology, real estate and other operations. Meredith has led and mentored 13 direct reports performing finance, accounting, tax, audit, budgeting, accounting, payroll, revenue cycle management, pricing, acquisitions, IT & security, real estate, project and investment management, HR, information services, records management, docketing and other operations.

During their time at Jenner & Block, Meredith drove 125% EPS and 55% revenue growth with only 6% headcount increase by designing growth, cost reduction and cash flow improvement strategies, and improving matter management. Meredith also fostered client/partner collaboration on 50+ matters, improved efficiency and predictability by creating and implementing bespoke project management methodology, processes and AI tools. In addition, they increased transparency and created actionable information by introducing metrics, KPIs and dashboards. Meredith also negotiated new bank agreements and saved 50 bps during Lehman collapse.

In addition to the above achievements, Meredith also opened offices in LA and London during their time at Jenner & Block, led the real estate strategy, and achieved $45M of savings by effective management of leasing, construction and improvements totaling 670K sq feet in 5 offices. She

Meredith W. Mendes has earned an MBA with honors from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, a JD from Harvard Law School, and an AB from Brown University. Meredith is also a certified public accountant and a member of the Illinois and Massachusetts bars. In addition, they have completed the Women's Director Development Program at Northwestern University - Kellogg School of Management and the Leadership in Law Firms program at Harvard Law School Executive Education. Meredith is also certified by the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) as a Series 7 General Securities Representative and by the Software Engineering Institute | Carnegie Mellon University as a CERT Certificate in Cybersecurity Oversight.