10/07/2024

Thea Dudley

New to UID

Thea Dudley is a credit management veteran in the building materials and construction industry. In her over three decades of work as a credit and collections officer, Thea Dudley has trekked across deserts to recover goods, taken FBI interrogation classes to learn negotiators “tells” and suffered through more lame reasons for extending credit then she can count. She knows how to decide whose worthy of credit and how to go after those who abuse the privilege. 

From her early days “working” in her Dad’s subcontracting business, she quickly moved into the power seat of the business: granting credit and collecting the money. Thea has spent her career working across credit departments of manufacturers, suppliers, dealers, contractors, and subcontractors, from large corporations to her husband’s family lumber business, working in and leading every size credit department from solo to nationwide credit teams, to improve cash flow for both the company and the customer. Formerly Vice President of Financial Services at two nationwide material distributors, she has trained hundreds of credit managers, sales reps, and presidents to use the credit department as business partner.

Thea is an inspiring leader and coach who promotes the philosophy that credit and sales can profitability co-exist. She specializes in building a strong credit people and teams by considering the entire order to cash process, creative thinking and the business as a whole. She is a national speaker, author, columnist, and at her very core, a credit professional. You can learn more on her views on all things credit and collections on her monthly Webex series on LBM Journal, her wildly popular LBM Journal Credit Q & A, various podcasts including Bradley Hartman’s Behind your Back Podcast, The Roofers Show Podcast, Credit Management Education Series at Levelset, and many others. Her debut book “The Credit Overlords’ Guide to Credit and Collections” is available on Amazon.