Business & Legal Strategy |Global Perspective | Complexity
Solutions at the Intersection of Strategy, Complexity and Sustainability
SCOULAR COMPANY
SVP, Chief Legal Officer and Corporate Secretary
Senior Associate General Counsel – International Lead
VALMONT INDUSTRIES, INC. (NYSE: VMI)
Vice President & General Manager Global Agriculture & North America Irrigation and Tubing
Vice President, Deputy General Counsel – Valmont Industries
Vice President & General Counsel – Infrastructure
Member, CEO – ESG Taskforce
Kari O’Neill Potts is a Senior Executive with 15+ years of experience in global commercial markets, industrial equipment manufacturing and sales, and ESG standards. Based on her strong financial acumen and exceptional judgement, she capitalizes on domestic and international market intelligence, business trends, and economic cycles in the agriculture, infrastructure, and utility sectors to accelerate revenue growth. As regulatory environments evolve, she recognizes the range of enterprise risk issues requiring board level attention.
Recently, Kari joined the Scoular Company an employee-owned $10.5B agribusiness leveraging global networks and expertise in the purchase, sale, storage, and handling and processing of grain and ingredients to deliver reliable solutions to farmers, grain processors, and renewable energy producers. Scoular, headquartered in Omaha, has a footprint of 100+ offices and facilities globally, and ranks 48th on the Forbes list of America’s largest private companies. In her roles as Chief Legal Officer, Kari serves on the Senior Leadership Team and leads Scoular’s legal and compliance teams, serving as the company’s principal advisor on legal, risk, compliance, governance. She also serves as Corporate Secretary to the Board.
Previously, she held multiple leadership roles at Valmont, a $4.5B global leader in infrastructure and agricultural equipment, and industrial technology. She was the Vice President & General Manager of North America – Global Agriculture, adding to her role as Vice President & General Manager of North America Irrigation and Tubing, where she oversaw a $600M P&L. Kari set strategy and led business development, margin optimization, and operations management. She frequently reported to the board on business results and changing risk environments. In her first year in the role, the segment achieved 50%+ revenue growth.
Earlier, Kari led legal and compliance functions for Global Infrastructure ($2.2B revenue) serving as legal advisor to the segment President and a key member of the leadership team. It was her leadership of the (6-member) Transformation Team that combined Valmont’s main divisions (Lighting and Traffic, Utilities, and Telecom) into the overarching Infrastructure segment driving efficiency and removing redundancy. She managed significant M&A, joint venture, and divestiture transactions including the $130M acquisition of an Italian solar company, which expanded Valmont’s domestic and international footprint. As well, Kari led a complex international tax re-organization of subsidiaries in South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, Vietnam, the United Kingdom and the United States representing $1B in assets