Carol Lavin Bernick (NC ’74)

Chief Executive Officer
Polished Nickel Capital Management

Polished Nickel Capital Management is a privately held company that manages diversified investments and owned operating companies in retail and professional sports.

During Carol’s 37-year career with Alberto Culver Company, a global manufacturer of beauty and personal care products, she directed the company’s new product development, managed its consumer products businesses and was elected Executive Chairman in 2004. While dramatically growing the company, Carol instituted a nationally-recognized cultural overhaul profiled in the June 2001 Harvard Business Review and as recently as 2014 in Resurgence - The Four Stages of Market-Focused Reinvention [Palgrave MacMillan Trade].

In 2011 she initiated and oversaw the company’s sale to Unilever.

Among her various community commitments Mrs. Bernick is a board member, and immediate past board chair, of Northwestern Memorial Healthcare, a board she has served on for over 18 years. She is a member of the Northwestern University Board of Trustees, the Executive Committee for the Global Advisory Board of The Kellogg School and serves as a vice chair of the Board of Tulane University. She is a member of the BDT Capital Partners Fund Advisory Committee. She founded a support group for Prentice Women’s Hospital that has raised millions of dollars to benefit infant and women’s health. Carol has been cited by community groups such as Legal Momentum, Athena International and Harvard Club of Chicago for her work benefiting health care, education and families. She recently received an honorary doctorate from Lewis University. The mother of three adult children and grandmother of six, she has been named Working Mother of the Year by the International Association of Working Mothers.