On the other end is a newly hired controller in way over her head. She's turned over two-thirds of her staff and is sitting bare bones. PE bought the company, and now comes the reckoning — they want clean financials out of what is an absolute mess. She's been working 80-hour weeks for months and hasn't seen her friends or family. The pressure just keeps mounting.
I step in and unload nearly all of it.
Week one, I find the root causes of problems that have been dragging on for months. We start changing processes. I overhaul a month-end checklist that was never catching true period-end flux. I connect with departments that haven't talked to finance before and start bridging the gap on why we're seeing the swings we're seeing.
Then I spend time with her senior accountants, fresh from a two-year CPA firm — sharp people who know the basics but nothing about the business. I walk them through the plant and show them what WIP actually is, so it's something they can see and touch instead of a line on a report.
You can't explain a number you've never stood next to.
That same instinct is why I've coached over 100 mentees into lasting finance leadership roles across multiple industries.
Ultimately, I report to investors. Their contribution made the business possible, and their livelihood is on the line the same as everyone else's. I never lose sight of that. My job is to see the risk early and get it in front of management early enough that they can act on it — and sometimes that means sitting in a department head's meeting to understand what's actually driving it.
I wear all of those hats interchangeably. That's what makes me useful.
Twenty years across every kind of business, and one thing never changes: I can internalize it, conceptualize it, and then explain how the numbers in my financials represent the products we make, the services we offer, and the goods we sell.
Once I walk a department head through the drivers behind a delta in a way they can understand, real change can take place. This is where margin expansion happens — line by line, starting with the big issues first. I give the numbers a voice and a story that makes sense, so people can understand and act. I can stop mid-close to approve a trip for marketing. I remove the obstacle. Not because it isn't my job, but because finance is a service, and being helpful is the whole point.
Along the way, the controller who hired me got her life back. The audit went from high risk to best in class. And there are processes I built still running today at businesses I left years ago.
I believe manufacturing is our nation's backbone, and we need to protect those jobs and keep them on our soil. That's my north star. But this work isn't reserved for factories. Every small business — the muffin shop as much as the machine shop — runs on the same two things: money in, money out, done right.
I'm a USAF veteran and a Finance Officer by training. I earned my Master's in Accounting while raising a two-year-old. I'm fair, impartial, have a wicked sense of humor, and I'll call it as I see it regardless of politics — because if something needs improving, decision-makers need to know.
Now that you know how I work, I'm excited to get to know you.