About
About
Meet Carol.
With a 30-plus year tenure at Alberto Culver Company in numerous senior executive roles, Carol Lavin Bernick mastered the boardroom of a successful international conglomerate. Carol’s strength as an executive leader is equally matched with her commitment to family, community and giving back. She recently published a collection of her learnings from work, to family and home to be a “life resource.” The goal of her book, Gather As You Go, is to provide people in all walks of life, and in all stages of their lives, with ideas that can be helpful, thought-provoking, encouraging, or amusing. Carol is the proud mother of three adult married children and a grandmother to six grandchildren, ages five and under.
Carol as a Leader:
- As Executive Chairperson of Alberto Culver, she instituted a nationally-recognized cultural overhaul profiled in Harvard Business Review, among others. Creator of Mrs. Dash, Static Guard and other well-known brands, she excels at strategic thinking and led the company to compete successfully with companies 20-30 times the size of Alberto Culver.
- Carol extends her leadership to boards of organizations that matter to her – 23-years serving as a Northwestern Memorial Healthcare Board of Director and immediate past Chair, as well as serving on the boards of Northwestern and Tulane Universities and the Chicago Community Trust.
- In 2005, Carol was named National Working Mother of the Year by the Moms in Business Network.
- Among her other many honors, she is proud to have received the following:
- Outstanding Alumna Award from Tulane University
- Association for Financial Professionals (AFP) Philanthropy Award
- YWCA Outstanding Achievement Award in Business
- Recognition from Athena International, Legal Momentum, Women’s E Network and Children’s Home and Aid for her role in mentoring and advancing women’s careers.
Carol as a Philanthropist:
Carol has always been driven to give back and established organizations that have allowed her to do so, such as The Carol Lavin Bernick Family Foundation, The Friends of Prentice of Northwestern Memorial Healthcare and the newly established non-profit, Enchanted Backpack. This Chicago-area nonprofit provides books, school supply essentials, winter clothing and other needed resources to the region’s most underserved elementary and middle schools and community organizations.
Carol as Daughter, Mother, Partner, Wife and Friend:
Carol has weathered storms that would wreck most. She speaks candidly and poignantly on her experiences with love, loss, marriage, divorce and death. While everybody handles these situations differently, her heartfelt and personal stories are integral to the Gather As You Go wisdoms. She believes that in transparency comes learning. She discusses the loss of her brother to a drug overdose; working through high-risk pregnancies; losing a baby to stillbirth; and supporting the love of her life, Bobby, during his last years battling brain cancer.
Does everything always go as planned? Never. But with patience, good will, and, most importantly, when you are surrounded by caring, bright, motivated people, most everything has a prayer of getting back on track quickly and stronger than ever.” – C.L.B
A few of Carol’s favorites:
Meet the Stars – Today
It takes a lot of courage to tell all the stories that follow and subject my family to the exposure of all that is in this book. But without full disclosure, how is anyone going to really learn anything? I want to thank my incredible family for their support, and most of all, for allowing…
Things Don’t Always Go as Planned
My first pregnancy was uneventful until it wasn’t. Almost seven weeks before I was due I started bleeding—talk about scary. I was at a restaurant with my husband and friends. We called the doctor, and he said to come to the hospital. My doctor at the time was a cousin of my father-in-law, and the…
Passing the Reins
The following story is about moving our business to a second generation. It is really a story about family business, but it is also a story about leadership and taking control. It is an incredibly long story, and the following is just the first layer in the cake—a cake with dozens of layers. Alberto Culver…