Eileen Owen is a business-focused finance executive, Certified Public Accountant, and strategic transformation leader with 28 years of professional experience helping organizations navigate growth, complexity, regulatory demands, and organizational change. With a career spanning Big Four public accounting and senior corporate finance leadership, she has developed a reputation for bringing structure and clarity to environments where the stakes are high and the ground is shifting. Known by colleagues as the “calm in the storm,” Eileen combines financial discipline, thoughtful leadership, and an ability to translate complex challenges into practical strategies that strengthen organizations for the future.
Throughout her career, Eileen has worked at the intersection of finance, governance, operations, technology, and organizational transformation. Her expertise encompasses SEC financial reporting, technical accounting research, audit management, SOX and regulatory compliance, M&A integration, enterprise systems, process improvement, team building, and cross-functional leadership. She is particularly energized by organizations experiencing rapid growth or significant change, where financial infrastructure, reporting processes, technology, and teams must evolve together. Rather than viewing transformation solely as a systems or accounting initiative, Eileen approaches it as an enterprise challenge requiring strategic alignment, disciplined execution, and strong communication.
Most recently, Eileen served as Corporate Controller at HITT Contracting, where she was recruited to stabilize and transform the corporate accounting organization during a period of extraordinary expansion. As the company grew from approximately $3 billion to $20 billion in annual revenue, she led responsibilities spanning financial reporting, treasury, payroll, tax, FP&A, technical accounting, and enterprise controls while strengthening governance across the organization. She built and led a 15-person accounting team, recovered $7.6 million by resolving a four-year-old tax refund claim, modernized financial reporting to help achieve two consecutive years without audit findings, and led significant banking and payroll transformations without disrupting operations.
Before HITT, Eileen served as Director of Accounting at DLH Corporation, where she established a new corporate accounting function and helped transform financial reporting for a provider of health and national security readiness solutions. Her work centered on creating stronger processes, establishing end-to-end data flows, improving the financial close, strengthening controls, and increasing financial understanding across departments. She also played a key role in integrating a business generating approximately $188 million in revenue within 30 days of acquisition, supporting accurate external reporting and audit compliance. Her technology leadership included implementing the Workiva GRC platform, integrating multiple ERP environments, and supporting the rollout of Business Central.
Earlier, as Financial Reporting Manager at Mars, Eileen led reporting processes and worked closely with senior finance stakeholders, including the CFO organization, consolidations, treasury, tax, technical accounting, and external auditors. She helped teams better leverage Workiva, Power BI, Power Query, and Microsoft Power Apps while advancing automation, controls, reporting efficiency, and collaboration. That experience reinforced a theme that has followed Eileen throughout her career: technology creates its greatest value when organizations connect it to better processes, better information, and better decision-making rather than implementing systems simply for the sake of modernization.
At Alion Science and Technology, Eileen served in a technical accounting leadership role within a private-equity-owned technology organization preparing for acquisition. She led the implementation of evolving GAAP requirements, strengthened financial processes, advised stakeholders on complex accounting matters, and supported accounting for areas including leases, revenue recognition, goodwill, and intangible assets. Her work helped create stronger documentation, consistency, and financial readiness as the organization prepared for a successful acquisition. This experience further developed her ability to operate effectively where technical accounting, transaction readiness, governance, and strategic business priorities converge.
Eileen also brought significant risk and controls expertise to Orbital ATK, a Fortune 500 aerospace and defense organization, where she worked within the Controller’s organization on SOX compliance, financial reporting, risk assessment, and cash forecasting. She played a central role in a major SOX rationalization initiative that reduced approximately 3,500 financial statement controls to fewer than 300 while helping remediate more than 20 material weaknesses and achieve a clean opinion on internal controls. She subsequently managed cash forecasting for two divisions representing approximately $3 billion in annual revenue and developed a forecasting model designed to improve liquidity visibility and short- and long-term planning.
Her foundation in audit and financial discipline was established at KPMG, where she progressed to Senior Audit Associate and gained experience across federal and commercial engagements. She led teams through challenging audit environments, including work involving prior-year restatements, material weaknesses, first-year audits, grant audits, and a highly visible Department of Defense audit-readiness initiative. That Big Four foundation continues to influence her approach today: ask rigorous questions, understand the evidence, establish accountability, and ensure that financial information can withstand scrutiny while remaining useful to business leaders.
Across these experiences, Eileen has become especially valuable to organizations undergoing transformation. She understands that rapid growth can expose weaknesses in reporting, controls, systems, processes, and organizational design that were less visible at a smaller scale. Her strength lies in helping leadership teams address those challenges strategically—modernizing reporting, improving software utilization, integrating ERP and financial technologies, identifying underused resources, introducing greater automation, and exploring how emerging capabilities such as artificial intelligence can improve the finance function while preserving appropriate governance and oversight.
Equally important to Eileen is the human side of transformation. She has repeatedly built, developed, and led accounting organizations, including teams of up to 15 professionals, while working across functions and levels of leadership. She believes strong organizations benefit from diversity of thought, intellectual curiosity, accountability, and an environment where people are encouraged to challenge assumptions and develop better solutions. Her leadership style combines high standards with composure and empathy, enabling her to manage upward, laterally, and across organizations while maintaining focus during periods of uncertainty.
Eileen’s academic accomplishments reflect the same discipline she has demonstrated professionally. She earned both a Master of Science in Accounting and a Bachelor of Science in Accounting from George Mason University after completing an Associate in Science in Business Administration at Northern Virginia Community College. While pursuing her graduate degree, she served as a Graduate Teaching Assistant, passed all four parts of the CPA examination, earned a 3.8 GPA, and received George Mason University’s 2012 Student Achievement Award for superior academic achievement, leadership, and professionalism. Her undergraduate accomplishments included graduating with honors and receiving recognition for Excellence in Major for Accounting, while she previously graduated summa cum laude with a 4.0 GPA from Northern Virginia Community College while working full-time.
As Eileen considers board and advisory opportunities, she is particularly interested in bringing her experience to organizations where strategic oversight can make a meaningful difference. She is drawn to mid-cap and larger companies with a meaningful mission to serve the greater good including service, software, engineering, manufacturing businesses, and is especially well positioned to contribute where organizations face rapid growth, financial transformation, M&A integration, regulatory complexity, technology modernization, or significant organizational change. She brings the perspective of an executive who has not merely observed transformation from the sidelines, but has been responsible for helping organizations execute it while protecting financial integrity and business continuity.
For Eileen, board service represents an opportunity to apply decades of experience to a broader purpose: helping organizations solve complex problems, anticipate risk, strengthen decision-making, and create positive, sustainable change. Her career demonstrates an ability to enter challenging environments, understand what is truly driving the problem, bring the right stakeholders together, and build solutions designed to last. Outside of her professional life, Eileen enjoys hiking, nature, and spending time outdoors with her family and dogs—interests that reflect the grounded perspective, curiosity, and appreciation for balance that she brings to leadership.
Character:
Eileen brings composure, integrity, accountability, and resilience to environments characterized by significant growth and change. Her reputation as the “calm in the storm” reflects a leadership philosophy grounded in helping people move through complexity with confidence, clarity, and purpose.
Knowledge:
Her experience encompasses financial reporting, SEC requirements, technical accounting, GAAP, SOX, audit management, internal controls, M&A integration, ERP environments, process improvement, automation, and financial transformation. Her Big Four foundation, CPA credential, corporate leadership experience, and exposure to organizations ranging from hundreds of millions to billions of dollars in revenue give her a sophisticated understanding of both financial governance and operational realities.
Strategic:
Eileen looks beyond individual accounting issues to understand how people, processes, systems, controls, data, and business objectives interact. She is particularly effective at helping organizations transform financial infrastructure during periods of rapid growth, transactions, regulatory change, and technology modernization while keeping long-term scalability in view.
Communication:
Skilled at translating technical and financial complexity into information that stakeholders across an organization can understand and act upon. Her experience managing upward, laterally, and across functions enables her to build alignment among executives, finance teams, auditors, operational leaders, and other stakeholders while maintaining clarity during demanding periods.
