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Within 4 months of her 2019 arrival inside BDSI\\u2019s CFO office, Terry Coelho had spearheaded a product acquisition and managed a successful equity raise\\u2014two finance milestones that would produce generous sales tailwinds for the specialty pharmaceutical firm. \\xa0

BDSI would experience 100% net sales growth in 2019, followed by 40% net sales growth in 2020.\\xa0 Such sales momentum recently led BDSI to issue a press release praising its \\u201cnew commercial team\\u201d and at the same time announcing that Coelho\\u2019s CFO title would now include the designation \\u201cexecutive vice president.\\u201d

For Coelho, a seasoned finance executive who spent more than a decade serving in a variety of senior positions inside Novartis and Sealed Air Corp., the call to leadership at BDSI afforded her a wide berth from which deliver results that are now arguably visible to all.

Still, even this success chapter must compete for our attention when we hear about a promotion that she received from candy and pet food giant Mars Incorporated early in her career. At the time, when Coelho was in her early 30s she was asked by John Mars (currently chairman) to relocate to South America and build a plant to start up Mars\\u2019s confectionery business in Brazil.

\\u201cWhen the plant concept was coming about, John Mars said to me, \\u2018You can do this job,\\u2019 and I kind of looked at him and thought to myself, \\u2018Why not?,\\u2019\\u201d says Coelho, who had first gotten her FP&A acumen noticed inside the corporate planning function of \\xa0Mars\\u2019s McLean, Virginia, headquarters.

Years later, as she prepared to return to the U.S., the Brazilian team presented her with a photo of the former cow pasture that the Mars plant was then occupying. After a number of expansions, the factory and Brazilian business operations under Coelho\\u2019s leadership had grown to provide jobs to 200 people. \\xa0\\xa0\\xa0

\\u201cI don\\u2019t think that most companies would have given someone with my experience\\u2014at that point in my career\\u2014that kind of an opportunity. It has really shaped whom I\\u2019ve become. I have a breadth of experience from having run an entire business, and when you build it, you know it even better,\\u201d explains Coelho, who, after returning to the U.S., would hold a number of strategic finance positions, including CFO of Mars Direct, a newly formed direct-to-consumer business unit that would establish itself as one of the company\\u2019s future growth engines. \\xa0\\u2013Jack Sweeney

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