Steve Baginski

Steven Baginski is a veteran corporate finance executive with more than 25 years of senior financial and operating leadership, the bulk of it in retail and apparel. He earned both a BS in Operations Research and Industrial Engineering and an MBA from Cornell University. Early in his career he held finance roles of increasing responsibility at PepsiCo and American Airlines, and served as CFO of FMC Gold Company, a publicly traded precious-metals exploration and production firm.

He spent roughly eight years at Limited Brands (now Bath & Body Works/L Brands), rising to Senior Vice President, Corporate Finance. He then served as Chief Administrative Officer at Hercules Tire & Rubber Company — responsible for finance, human resources, and information technology — and subsequently as Chief Financial Officer of Kellwood Company, an apparel manufacturer, marketer, and retailer. In April 2012, at age 53, he was appointed CFO of The Children's Place Retail Stores, Inc.; that tenure was brief, with his departure reported after about seven months.

In the years since, Baginski moved into the nonprofit sector at the Natural Resources Defense Council. At NRDC he has been responsible for finance, information technology, and facilities-management operations, and has served as the primary staff liaison to the board's finance, investment, and audit committees. Contact-data aggregators currently list his title as "Senior Financial Advisor," consistent with a senior finance leadership/advisory role at the organization rather than an investing role. His background also reportedly includes consulting work (Tatum, a Randstad company, and independent finance consulting).

• No personal angel/venture investment thesis was found. Baginski's documented role is institutional corporate and nonprofit finance, not startup investing.
• His finance remit at NRDC includes liaising with the board's investment committee — this is oversight of the organization's institutional reserves/endowment, not deploying personal seed checks into startups.
• If a founder encountered him in a "deals" context, the realistic frame is corporate finance, FP&A, retail/apparel operations, IT and procurement — areas where Elfers (then-CEO of Children's Place) publicly credited him with "deep knowledge of the retail apparel business" and "extensive experience in IT, logistics and procurement."