Keep pulling the thread on Carol Tomé.
During Carol Tomé's tenure as CFO, shareholder value at The Home Depot grew by 450%.
Carol Tomé was the first corporate officer hired from outside of The Home Depot.
Around 1995, The Home Depot was considering its first international expansion.
In 1995, Carol Tomé observed that The Home Depot was a strong cash-generating business with a great credit quality.
The Home Depot co-founder Arthur Blank recruited Carol Tomé by promising her "every opportunity to reach your highest potential."
In 1995, when Carol Tomé joined, The Home Depot had 400 stores and $14 billion in revenue.
The Home Depot hired Carol Tomé to help with its international expansion and to increase the company's financial acumen as it was maturing.
Carol Tomé believes that the best finance professionals are business people first and finance people second.
While CEO of The Home Depot, Frank Blake added strategy to Carol Tomé's portfolio as CFO.
Carol Tomé believes aligning strategy and finance is effective because both are fundamentally about capital allocation.
The Home Depot's leadership model is an "inverted pyramid" where leaders are at the bottom, bearing responsibility to free up associates to serve customers.
The Home Depot co-founder Bernie Marcus's core business philosophy was that if you take care of the customers, everything else will take care of itself.