Linda Besh
Linda Besh is the Corporate Controller at Evans Industries, a Michigan-based private-equity company and foundry group that invests in small and mid-size manufacturers of material-handling, mobility, and engineered products. A controller with two decades of experience across the manufacturing and automotive sectors, she leads the company’s accounting, treasury, and financial-reporting functions.
At Evans Industries, Linda oversees consolidated accounting and reporting across a group of operating businesses that includes Darnell-Rose, a caster and wheel manufacturer with a heritage dating to 1921, along with Ball Brass & Aluminum Foundry, Meloon Foundries, and SaFE-T-Metal. Her responsibilities span full-charge treasury, risk and benefits management — including 401(k) audit and oversight — intercompany reconciliation, payroll, and capital expenditures. She has implemented policies that increased cash flow and reduced debt, and works directly with the company’s owners and executives to produce custom analysis for leadership.
Before joining Evans Industries in 2019, Linda was Financial Controller and Accountant at KESSLER USA Inc. between 2017 and 2019, the North American arm of Germany’s Kessler Group, a manufacturer of motor spindles and precision components for the machine-tool industry founded in 1923.
There she managed treasury, foreign-currency transactions and hedging, financial reporting, and the purchasing and sales functions, serving as full-charge accountant through closing and reporting. Earlier in 2017, on a contract placed through Kelly Services, she worked as a Risk and Control Analyst II at Comerica Bank, performing hedge-trade risk analysis and control.
Linda’s career also includes a distinctive chapter at the intersection of finance and emerging technology. Between 2013 and 2017, she served as an Event Coordinator for Niantic — first while it operated as Niantic Labs, an internal startup within Google led by John Hanke, and then after it became an independent company. Her involvement began as a volunteer brand ambassador traveling to events before she joined as an event coordinator, planning and producing real-world activations for Ingress, Niantic’s augmented-reality, location-based mobile game.
She handled venue procurement, event design and logistics, staffing, merchandising, and community management across social channels, and supported Ingress panels at comic, science-fiction, and gaming conventions. Ingress served as the proof of concept for the platform that later became Pokémon Go.
Niantic Labs recognized Linda — known in the game as “Portalyst” — as one of the top five Ingress players in the world and the only one from the United States, a distinction she earned largely for her community-building work. Read Meet the Plymouth Woman Who Is One of the World’s Top Players of Google’s Ingress.
Linda began her finance career in automotive manufacturing. Between 2008 and 2013 she was a Financial Analyst at Yazaki North America, the North American arm of the Japanese automotive supplier Yazaki Corporation.
She first joined Yazaki in 2007 as a Finance Department Coordinator placed through Kelly Services, supporting the Executive Vice President of Finance and the directors of tax, audit, and risk management. Between 2004 and 2005, she was a Sales Accountant at Office Depot, supporting business reviews with major corporate customers.
Linda earned her Bachelor of Business Administration in Management, Summa Cum Laude with a 4.0 grade point average, from Northwood University in 2007. She pursued graduate coursework in accounting through the master’s program at Walsh College, a private business college in Troy, Michigan, and earned an Associate of Applied Science in Accounting from Schoolcraft College in Livonia, Michigan.
Linda has been active in board governance and professional development. Between 2012 and 2014 she served as Board Secretary and Board Treasurer of the Schoolcraft College Foundation Board of Governors, which funds scholarships and emerging initiatives for the college.
She is a member of Inforum, a Michigan professional organization founded in 1962 that advances careers for women, where she has taken part in its AutomotiveNEXT industry group and Emerging Leaders programming. In 2014, she was featured in Sennheiser’s People with momentum video series for her work building the Ingress community. Watch People with momentum.
Visit Linda Besh’s LinkedIn profile and Intch profile.