Cindy Yao takes Tredegar's $450,000 CFO seat. The path ran through a tax master's and HF Foods.

Cindy Yao, 59, started Monday as vice president, chief financial officer, and treasurer of Tredegar Corporation. The Richmond industrial manufacturer, listed on the New York Stock Exchange as TG, announced the job on September 15 after the board voted on September 14. The chair opened when Frasier W. Brickhouse II, a Tredegar finance veteran since 1993, retired on September 1.

Tredegar makes custom aluminum extrusions through Bonnell Aluminum for building, auto, and specialty customers, and surface-protection films for electronics and packaging, including a plant in Guangzhou, China. About 1,800 people work there. New chief executive Arijit DasGupta, who goes by Bapi, is in the first year of One Tredegar, a plan to run those units as one operating company. DasGupta took the CEO seat on January 1 after leading the films business. He said he hired Yao for financial visibility, controls, and a tighter operating cadence.

Yao was born in Shanghai and is fluent in Mandarin, Cantonese, and Shanghainese. She earned an English-literature degree at East China Normal University, a Shanghai public university, then a master's in accountancy with a tax focus at Virginia Tech and an executive MBA at the University of Rochester's Simon Business School. She is a former CPA. Language first, then a U.S. credential a controller can audit.

The middle of the résumé is plants and treasury. She held finance seats at Eastman Kodak, Corning, and Coopers & Lybrand, now part of PwC. From 2002 to 2013 she was vice president and corporate treasurer at Bausch + Lomb, the eye-health company, running global capital structure and working capital. Then came a decade as chief financial officer and executive vice president of Markel Food Group, a Richmond bakery-equipment maker that Virginia Business put around $350 million in sales when it named her 2023 large-company CFO of the Year. That magazine said she also ran some of the operating units and the China division, and that China revenue and profits roughly doubled over a two-year stretch. She took night calls with the China team.

In May 2024 she became CFO of HF Foods Group, a Nasdaq-listed distributor that supplies Asian restaurants across the United States. In a CFO.com interview she said being Asian and bilingual was part of why the fit made sense. She arrived after an earlier mess. The Securities and Exchange Commission had already gone after the company over 2018 to 2020 disclosures by its former chief executive and former CFO. Tredegar's announcement later credited her with finance-organization cleanup, capital-markets work, and systems upgrades at that distributor. The conduct in the SEC case was not hers.

The HF Foods seat lasted 17 months. The company said she left on October 15, 2025, without cause and not over accounting disagreements. Her base there was $375,000. Severance was half a year's salary. In May 2026 she became CFO of Holon Health, a small Richmond startup that works on substance-use and mental-health care, then took the Tredegar job four months later. Public-company turnaround chairs can pay. They can also end before a household has rebuilt the buffer.

Tredegar's Form 8-K sets her annual base at $450,000, $50,000 above the base Brickhouse was given when he became CFO in January. The 2026 cash bonus target is 60 percent of base, or $270,000 if the plan pays at target, with a 120 percent cap. Long-term awards target 80 percent of base, split between restricted stock and cash, with the 2026 grant pro-rated from September 21. If those pieces hit target, the package is about $1.08 million before taxes. Year-one protection is thin. If the company ends the job without cause in the first twelve months, severance is month-for-month. After a year it steps up to one times base salary and twelve months of health-coverage continuation.

Read that filing the way you would a new vest schedule. The $450,000 base is the number that can fund parents or a Richmond mortgage this year. Restricted stock is not, until it vests. Month-for-month severance means a household that raises the family wire the week the press release hits is funding a job that is still on probation. RSU Vest-Day Playbook for Diaspora Households is the calendar. Career Negotiation When You Were Raised Not to Ask is the reminder to get the severance step-up in writing before you spend the title.

She stacked a tax master's, a treasurer seat, a decade inside manufacturing, China P&L, and a public-company cleanup. Diaspora professionals steered toward prestige staff roles can put that next to First-Gen and Immigrant Layers of the Bamboo Ceiling. Boards that want an industrial reset still hire people who can close the books and walk a plant.

If your own offer letter just arrived, write down base, bonus target, equity mix, and what you actually receive if the job ends in month six. Price family support against the cash that clears. Run that line through the Family Support Budget Calculator. How to Build Generational Wealth as a Child of Immigrants still starts with surplus you can keep after the announcement fades.

The English major from Shanghai now holds the finance chair at a Richmond manufacturer. She already knew this town from the plant side. That path is worth taking seriously. So is the year-one clock on the 8-K.

This is educational reporting on a public-company appointment and compensation filing, not career, tax, or investment advice. Individual outcomes depend on board decisions and business results no 8-K can promise.