Guiding Organizations Through Growth and Change

Melissa Blinderman founded Lighthouse Advisory after spending 20+ years inside the organizations she now advises — not as an outside observer, but as the person accountable for the results.

As Director of NA Distribution Operations at CNH Industrial, she led a network of 800+ employees across nine sites, managing $300M in costs in support of $1.6B in revenue. She inherited a distribution operation in crisis — turnover over 100%, no trust, no accountability — and rebuilt it into a stable, high-performing network with turnover below the industry average. Before that, as Global Agriculture Aftermarket Controller, she managed a $2.3B P&L, and over 13 years at Johnson Controls she moved through progressive finance, controller, and expat leadership roles across the US and Europe. She’s a Certified FocalPoint Executive Coach, and she has done the work she now helps others do.

That experience shapes how Lighthouse Advisory operates. Melissa doesn’t lead with frameworks or theory — she leads with what she’s actually seen work on a warehouse floor, in a P&L review, and in a room full of leaders who’ve stopped trusting each other. Her work spans operational efficiency, leadership development, employee retention, and growth readiness, and in every engagement, she works directly with leadership teams to find the real root cause, build systems that hold up under pressure, and develop the internal capacity to keep improving after she’s gone.

Lighthouse Advisory was built on a simple belief: the best advisory work happens through genuine partnership, from someone who has actually sat in the seat — working alongside leaders to solve the problems that are real to them, not the ones that fit neatly into a slide deck.