Theresa Bauer

Theresa ran operations for a mid-size distribution firm for most of a decade, which means she has personally owned a P&L, a warehouse lease, a fleet contract, and the 6 a.m. phone call when all three collide. She started writing columns because the business advice she read kept recommending things she had tried, and could price.

Her Meridian column lives where strategy meets arithmetic: last-mile density, fleet electrification as route math, refund policies as support-ticket economics, procurement discipline when the incentives all push the other way. She believes most business failures are boring, which is precisely why they repeat, and that the spreadsheet is where optimism goes to be audited.

She writes with the bluntness of someone who has signed both sides of a bad contract. Readers describe her columns as the friend who tells you the real number. She considers that the highest compliment available in her line of work.