Metra news release:
Carlson elected chairman of Metra Board of Directors
(October 14, 2016) - The Metra Board of Directors today unanimously elected Norman Carlson, an accounting professional with extensive experience in the rail industry, to be the next chairman of the board.
“It’s an honor for me to be selected by my fellow board members to serve in this leadership role as we continue to work to help this agency modernize and meet the unique challenges that lie before us,” Carlson said. “Together we have made great strides in accountability and transparency within the last few years and my mission will be to continue this forward momentum while addressing the need to secure better and more stable sources of capital funding.”
Mr. Carlson was appointed to the Metra Board of Directors in April 2013 by Aaron Lawlor, Chairman of the Lake County Board. He has most recently chaired the board’s Audit and Finance Committee, which has overseen a restructuring of the agency’s internal audit functions and has championed the agency’s move to adopt a more modern and robust accounting and management reporting system.
Mr. Carlson has extensive experience in the rail industry, having spent 34 years with Arthur Andersen Co., where he provided audit, income tax and financial consulting services to a variety of railroads large and small as head of Andersen’s North American Rail Industry practice. In 1990, he was named Worldwide Managing Partner of Andersen’s Transportation Practice, serving in that capacity until retiring from the firm in 2000. That same year, he formed Carlson Consulting International, serving as a short-term executive in challenging situations, including being the non-executive chairman of the board of RailWorks during its successful bankruptcy reorganization.
During his service on Metra Board, Mr. Carlson has also worked closely with staff as they developed plans to modernize the agency’s back-office accounting functions. The result is an ongoing $12.6 million implementation of the agency’s new Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system, which has a projected completion date of 2018.
“The goal of this Board and the executive team is to transform Metra into a world-class business and improve corporate governance,” Carlson said. “To do that, staff needs tools that allow it to provide better analysis of our cost-drivers so that we can more easily identify opportunities to create efficiencies that can reduce or hold operating costs in check.”
“Learning that the agency was using an accounting system that it had inherited from the Rock Island Railroad, a corporation that declared bankruptcy in 1980, shocked me when I joined the Metra Board in 2013,” Carlson said. “It became a mission, shared with others on the board, to advocate for the adoption of a new and more modern accounting and management reporting system and that was the genesis of Metra staff taking on the ERP project.”
Mr. Carlson is a graduate of the University of Illinois with a B.S. in Accountancy and is a certified public accountant. He served as a U. S. Army infantry officer in Vietnam and was awarded the Bronze Star for meritorious service.
In addition to his service on the Metra Board, Mr. Carlson actively supports Catholic Charities with a focus on veterans programs. He is also a member of the Business Advisory Committee to the Transportation Center at Northwestern University, moderator of the monthly railroad discussion group at Northwestern, pro bono advisor to the City of Lake Forest on transportation matters and managing editor of “First and Fastest,” a publication on the history and current operations of rail passenger service in Chicago.
