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Poole College of Management 
Accounting Department

Dwain Lanier

Dwain Lanier

Pareto Consulting, LLC
Managing Director

Dwain Lanier is managing director of Pareto Consulting LLC, a consultancy firm specializing in organizational performance improvement and change management, and president of Aspire Higher LLC, a real estate and rental company.  He previously served as vice president of operational and regulatory assurance for the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), the nation’s largest public power provider.  At TVA, his groups ensured clear organizational accountability to support key initiatives and mitigate enterprise risks as well as serving in the role of regulator for the Local Power Companies served by TVA.

Lanier possesses a broad and diverse background in audit, operations and finance, building his leadership skills along the way. Early in his career, Lanier served as an auditor with the North Carolina Department of Revenue. He later served as vice president of Audit Services at Progress Energy (now Duke Energy), where his group was awarded a top-ten audit group designation. Lanier gained operations experience in his roles at GKN Automotive as plant manager in Manufacturing Operations and Director of Manufacturing for U.S. Operations. He enhanced that experience when he took a position as vice president of Manufacturing at Keystone Automotive.

While at Progress Energy, he also served as CEO of MEMCO Barge Lines and in leadership roles for Unregulated Merger Integration, Fossil Fuels and Combustion Turbine Operations. He held transactional and analytical accounting roles at Data General Corporation (now Dell Computers) achieving the position of Domestic Manufacturing Controller. Other financial roles included a stint at GKN Automotive as Operations Controller.

Dwain holds a Bachelor’s degree in Accounting from North Carolina State University and a Six Sigma Black Belt certificate from the University of Texas at Austin. He is a board member for AgFirst Farm Credit Bank, serves on the Board of Directors for Southeast Raleigh YMCA, and is a member of the NCSU Poole College of Management Accounting Advisory Board. Lanier also founded Patriot State Bank, where he served as a director and chair of the governance committee.

Dwain and wife Gayle S. Lanier (Industrial Engineering ’82) reside in Raleigh, N.C. and they have one daughter Brittany G. Lanier (Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering ’07).