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Request a quoteCarey Alber-Milazzo
Executive Vice President at ILLING Packaging. Based in Richfield, WI.
About
Carey Alber-Milazzo is Executive Vice President at ILLING Packaging, overseeing purchasing and customer service, assisting the sales team, and contributing to select aspects of operations as a member of the executive team. A fourth-generation family member, she earned her ownership stake the long way: a decade of work across production, scheduling, and purchasing, proving herself in every corner of the business before reaching her current role.
She arrived with an unusual foundation, a decade as an occupational therapist, where she advanced into a rehabilitation management role overseeing a 100-bed skilled nursing facility and a staff of 14. Occupational therapists analyze systems, break down tasks, adapt environments, teach, and measure progress, and that is exactly how Carey manages today. Her approach to any new challenge is consistent: learn the system from the ground up, make it functional, document it, then build it so others can run it without her.
People development has become a defining part of her role, from coaching managers and mentoring buyers to writing the majority of ILLING’s purchasing SOPs and refining the KPI frameworks that hold the team accountable without micromanaging it. She believes great processes only matter if they help people succeed, and she holds herself to the same standard. Detail is how she shows up, and consistency is how she builds trust, with her team, her vendors, and her customers alike.
Education builds independence, but knowledge without drive is just information. What matters is the willingness to apply it.
Experience
Present
Executive Vice President
ILLING Packaging
Oversees purchasing and customer service, assists the sales team, and contributes to select aspects of operations as a member of the executive team. Leads three managers (CSR, global sourcing, and purchasing) along with the sales representatives who report to her.
Earlier at ILLING
Purchasing Manager, then Customer Service Oversight
ILLING Packaging
Worked up through production, scheduling, and purchasing to purchasing manager, then took on customer service oversight, broadening into sales support along the way, a decade of earning her seat one function at a time.
Prior career
Rehabilitation Manager & Occupational Therapist
Healthcare
Spent a decade in occupational therapy, advancing into a rehabilitation management role.
Selected Work
Build systems that work. Evolve them as the business grows.
Quarterly pricing, decoded. Carey manages quarterly pricing across ILLING’s premier vendors, each contract with its own structure of lag periods, commodity indices, and metrics that determine the material price change per pound. She taught herself the nuances until she could track market movements, hold vendors accountable, and translate each quarter’s changes into the pricing letters that go to ILLING’s customers and inform the sales team. Every quarter, she and her purchasing team verify incoming vendor pricing against each contract’s calculations before it affects ILLING or its customers.
A purchasing playbook that outlasts any one person. Carey authored the majority of ILLING’s purchasing SOPs, covering purchasing, global sourcing, and related functions. It is the same instinct that defines how she works: learn it, make it functional, then document it so the knowledge lives in the organization, not just with her.
Contracts that keep everyone accountable. Carey manages vendor contracts that govern quarterly pricing, along with stocking agreements and decorated agreements that serve ILLING’s customers, ensuring terms are clear and obligations are met on all sides.
Expertise