CEO Today Business Women of the Year Awards

USA 67 www.ceotodaymagazine.com CEO Today Business Women of the Year Awards 2019 KARLA R. LEWIS Senior Executive Vice President & Chief Financial Officer of Reliance Steel & Aluminum Co ABOUT KARLA R. LEWIS Upon the advice of a local CPA, Karla Lewis decided to become an accountant when she was in elementary school. She stayed the course, leaving the small farming town she grew up in to earn a BS in Business at Ohio State University, and later became a certified public accountant. A turning point came when Karla chose to do an internship in Los Angeles. Working on-site while conducting the independent audit, Karla had the opportunity to interact with many Reliance employees, both at the corporate headquarters and at some Reliance divisions. The insight she gleaned into Reliance’s unique culture influenced Karla’s decision to accept the position of Corporate Controller in 1992. Reliance was attractive not just because of the quality of people, but the opportunities for ongoing learning and development. In her two decades with Reliance, Karla has done just that. From Vice President and Corporate Controller, she progressively moved to Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer and, from 2002 to 2015, served Reliance as Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. FIRM PROFILE Reliance Steel & Aluminum Co. started in 1939 as a small, local distributor of steel reinforcing bar in Los Angeles, California. Within ten years of our inception, we had added magnesium and aluminum to our line of products. The postwar metals industry boom in the United States, coupled with visionary leadership, allowed us to pursue a decades-long course of expansion through growth and acquisition. This paved the way for our IPO in 1994, which allowed continued strategic growth in terms of location, products, and customers. Since then, Reliance has completed more than 55 acquisitions and risen to become the largest metals service center in North America. Through a network of more than 300 locations in 40 states and 13 countries outside of the United States, the Company provides value-added metals processing services and distributes a full line of over 100,000 metal products to more than 125,000 customers in a broad range of industries. Reliance Steel & Aluminum Co. became a Fortune 500 company in 2007 and has remained on that list ever since. Over 75 years after our humble beginnings, we continue to celebrate, affirm, and encourage our core values, both in our business practices and our local communities, keeping our family of companies successful. Our Industry Metals service centers acquire primary products such as carbon steel, aluminum, stainless steel, brass, copper, titanium, and alloy steel from metals producers and process them to customer specifications, including custom lengths, widths, shapes and surface characteristics. The specialized equipment used to process the metals requires high-volume production to be cost effective. Metals service centers like Reliance Steel & Aluminum Co. provide customers with readily available inventory, value-added metals processing, reliable and timely delivery, flexible minimum order size and quality control. We respond to a niche market created because of the focus on just-in-time inventory management and materials management outsourcing in the capital goods and related industries. An industry trend has been the consolidation of metals service centers. Driving factors include the high costs of maintaining state-of-the-art processing and distribution equipment; lack of access to low-cost capital; economies of scale in purchasing; increased information systems requirements; and a generational turnover in ownership. As the largest metals service center company in North America, Reliance will continue to be an active and strategic acquirer, at the forefront of consolidation in our large and still fragmented industry. Our strong financial profile, management philosophy, and acquisition expertise puts us firmly on the path of continued growth and profitability. www.rsac.com