ABOUT ME
Highly analytical and outcome-focused with extensive experience managing, educating, and performing complex financial, mathematical, and statistical data analytics, modeling, and forecasting. Specialized background in highly-regulated accounting, with experience collaborating with internal and external stakeholders, drafting expert testimony and legal briefs, and building consensus in multi-party negotiations through relationship-management strengths. Adept in application of GAAP principles and internal-auditing standards. Advanced technical strengths, having repeatedly developed and maintained various financial, engineering, and other data tools, systems, databases, and applications, to enhance profitability, revenue management, reporting, and compliance. Key expertise in streamlining and automating systems and processes.
Overview
Throughout my nearly 25-year career focused on business and operational intelligence, I have demonstrated leadership in financial management and reporting in both the for-profit and academic/non-profit realms, audit and oversight, budgeting, variance analysis, and statistical forecast modeling. As shown in the enclosed resume, my background includes progressive advancement culminating in my current positions as Director of Business Analytics and Fiscal Affairs at University of California San Diego School of Medicine Department of Medicine (UCSD Medicine); Interim Controller for Sapient Bioanalytics, LLC; and Adjunct Faculty in Graduate Statistics for the University of San Diego (USD) Applied Data Science master’s degree program. Applying finely honed analysis, communication, and technical strengths, I have made significant contributions in ensuring effective financial performance and promoting total accountability. Specific skills and qualifications that have contributed to my success and which I am prepared to leverage in dedication to your mission include:
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Broad technical proficiencies, with proven talent for leading creation of systems, tools, models, and simulations for analyzing, tracking, reviewing, and reporting performance;
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Excellent project and team management strengths, expertly guiding project from initiation to completion while meeting deadlines, managing stakeholder expectations, and mentoring personnel;
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Knowledge of budget development and administration; internal control evaluation and refinement; and audit planning, execution, and remediation activities; and
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Experience coordinating across business levels to report findings, provide strategic advice, contribute to decision-making processes.
Fiscal Affairs
The vast majority of my professional career has been in the financial realm for both for-profit and non-profit, academic, institutions. I have moved upward from division to department and regional budgeting and variance analysis, and now manage finances for the single largest department at UCSD, having previously led that effort for the largest department at SDG&E. My focus at UCSD is on the clinical and academic missions, with some visibility into the research realm as it affects non-research due to deficit spending or invalid expenditures. My team additional oversees clinical trial financials and external agreements for the Department, as well as monitoring data, reporting, and processes, for improvement efficiencies. At SDG&E, I performed a similar financial management role and also worked in capital asset management and rate setting. Within each position, I have overseen development of new systems and processes to streamline activities and improve the precision and accuracy of results in order to optimize revenues and minimize expenditures and risk.
Transparency
A key framework to success in an organization is transparency in all activities for key personnel as well as all other stakeholders affected by a process or system. At SDG&E, I worked hard as the Expert Witness in Probabilistic Depreciation and the Minority-Owner Audit Manager for San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (SONGS) to always provide clear and concise information. As an Expert Witness, this meant walking rate-case intervenors through key models and ensuring that written testimony provided sufficient evidence without overwhelming the reader with technical jargon. As an Audit Manager for SONGS, I ensured that requests and findings were clear both to the minority-owners represented, as well as the majority owner. Through those actions, historical audits were cleared that could never previously be performed and the minority owners had more financial returns than found in the entire history of the partnership.
Transparency is not just an outward activity for external stakeholders. At UCSD Medicine, we have been building financial models that have made internal assessment utilization and faculty compensation more transparent than ever before. For assessment utilization, we have been able to present clear and defined funds sources and uses models to leadership, as well as provide answers to faculty members regarding how their funds are utilized. The faculty compensation model has been even more transformational in both improving processes as well as creating transparency. For the first time ever, automated feeds of de-identified data from the EPIC electronic medical records are transferred to our servers and combined with centralized compensation models and financial records to create clear Tableau dashboards provided to divisions to show the composition of their clinical compensation as well as trend their performance during the year and relative to prior years.
Mentorship
At UCSD Medicine, I have expanded the Business Office into three distinct functions: Fiscal Affairs, Financial Services, and Data Science. This reimagining of the Business Office has resulted in generation of efficiencies and significant change for existing personnel, including creation of new advancement opportunities within the team. The promotion of key personnel provided with a conceptual framework has been instrumental in them taking ownership of this reimagined unit. I find this process of supporting team members in fostering their creativity and individualism leads to better productivity and improved morale over taking a strict top-down role of leadership. Much of this process of supporting the team to harness their skills for department improvement comes from my work as an adjunct faculty member at USD. Each individual approaches challenges from their own unique perspective and process. Helping to lead them in finding answers enables improved problem solving and a better grasp of each concept.
Diversity
Diversity is fundamental to my leadership process. My required question for every interview of any direct or indirect report is, “What does diversity mean to you?” The answers have been interesting and varied over the years but have led me to hone my own answer to this question. Diversity is opportunity. The greater the diversity of a team, the greater the ideas, perspectives, and individual backgrounds, that are brought to the table. While working to foster this growth of our team, only the best employees are hired and, unsurprisingly, this has resulted in an extremely diverse workforce. More than any accomplishment made in my career is this team that has been built. Each of their unique strengths and perspectives is why we have overcome challenges from the COVID pandemic, financial system changes, and new pathways in modeling faculty compensation and presenting transparent information to leadership and personnel.