Project Clients & Past Employers

• Countrywide Financial Corp ($200B of assets publicly listed financial services)
• HSBC Financial Corporation (formerly Household International Inc. - $150B of assets publicly listed financial services)
• Union Bank ($86B of assets subsidiary of publicly listed financial services)
• The Walt Disney Company ($38B publicly listed diversified entertainment company)
• Kraft Foods ($37B publicly listed food manufacturing and sales)
• Follett Corporation ($2B privately held retail bookstores and wholesale textbook provider)
• Fremont General Corporation (former publicly listed financial services provider)
• Option One Mortgage (former sub-prime mortgage lender and loan servicing subsidiary of H&R Block)
• People's Choice Home Loan (former privately held sub-prime mortgage lender)
• Chicago Zoological Society (not-for-profit animal conservation society and zoo)
• Harris Theater (privately held not-for-profit theater for music and dance)
• Deloitte & Touche (Clients included: Options Clearing Corp, Allsteel Inc., Cub Foods, Rohrer Hibler & Replogle, Loretto Hospital, Indiana Harbor Belt Railroad)

Functional Finance & Accounting Experience

Financial Planning & Analysis
• Hands-on and supervisory management experience preparing and consolidating annual operating budgets and forecasts for multiple companies, utilizing top-down, bottom-up, zero-based and incremental budgeting methods. Managed the creation and consolidation of annual plans and monthly/quarterly forecasts; experience encompasses corporate-level, divisional, and multi-location operating plans and forecasts.
• Extensive experience building, improving and refining financial models for various types of businesses.
• Created financial model and multiple reports for on-going analysis during development and negotiations of revised compensation model for $100M global advertising agency relationship; assisted in development of the agency evaluation process and redesigned evaluation form.
• Built executive reports and charts related to liquidity analysis and cash forecasting.
• Created model to establish weekly labor hours forecast for over 800 retail locations.
• Completed 36-month business plan which led to formation of new national accounts division.
• Implemented monthly forecast process at eight regional locations and trained key associates on methodology resulting in 75% improvement in forecasting accuracy.
• Negotiated and executed division-wide copier lease at annual savings of $100k over prior agreement.
• Analyzed credit risk of companies seeking commercial financing and monitored existing credits through analysis of company financials, market research, and regular contact with company management.

Financial Reporting & General Accounting
• Hands-on and supervisory management experience for various large and small companies, including monthly close, financial statement preparation, management reporting, variance analyses, and cash management at both the corporate and divisional levels.
• Coordinated and led monthly financial review meetings with divisional CFO and consolidated summary package for divisional executive management.
• Served as interim controller reviewing and correcting three months of activity and established processes and controls for journal entries.
• Managed the creation of departmental dashboards and consolidated board of trustee dashboard reports across nine departments.
• Built Excel models to house relevant departmental charts and tables, created processes for data collection and dashboard completion, and trained staff to maintain on-going reporting.
• Created cash flow and cash forecasting model for large non-profit entity.
• Identified and prepared journal entries for period-end accruals for operating business units and corporate divisions.
• Oversaw wire operations and treasury staff of ten; implemented cross-training programs and process improvements that reduced month-end funding issues by 50%.
• Developed production report templates, including closing ratio reports and monthly forecasting reports.
• Analyzed revenue recognition for Disneyland Resort's park admission revenues in response to SAB101 and implemented modifications approved by external auditors.
• Drove the analysis of newly implemented multi-park ticketing system at Disneyland Resort to ensure accurate attendance data capture and improved internal controls; developed and implemented detailed audit of daily attendance by park and approved final daily attendance reporting for distribution to key executives.
• Issued annual regulatory reports to state agencies and conducted research to ensure compliance with each state's requirements.
• Automated regional P&L statements saving two days of monthly reporting time.

Business Process Re-Engineering
• Re-engineered finance department roles and responsibilities and incorporated efficiencies resulting in headcount reduction from 15 to 13.
• Represented Disneyland Resort Finance on "Innoventions" project team and created accounting, forecasting, budgeting, billing, and reporting processes.
• Partnered with corporate finance to consolidate or eliminate redundant reporting and implemented efficiencies to improve monthly corporate reporting timeliness.
• Implemented a documentation and checklist process for monthly close, annual plan, and quarterly forecasting to ensure compliance with corporate protocols and standards.
• Identified opportunities to implement accrual estimates and post-close true-up entries to reduce monthly close/reporting by up to four days.

Financial Audit, Internal Controls & Sarbanes Oxley Compliance
• External audit background in financial services, retail, health care, manufacturing, and professional service industries.
• Planned, administered and performed financial and operational audits in public accounting including extensive analytical review procedures, ratio analyses, and substantive testing of clients' financial statements and disclosures; Supervised, trained, and evaluated staff auditors.
• Performed detailed reviews of audit clients' key business processes, including identification of significant operational risks, transactional risks, and relevant controls in place to mitigate the risks in order to foster an effective and efficient business environment.
• Implemented a documentation and checklist process for monthly close, annual plan, and quarterly forecasting.
• Conducted and led SOX process documentation, testing, and remediation efforts identification and implementation at multiple publicly-traded companies.
• Performed process walkthroughs via narrative and flowcharts to confirm understanding of key processes and controls affecting significant account.

Banking & Financial Services
• Developed and championed a shared fulfillment model for retail/wholesale lending environment that improved operational efficiencies.
• Partnered with Secondary Marketing and Credit Committee to recommend product differentiation by division based on unique customer base at Option One Mortgage.
• Performed regression analyses to develop relationships between loan loss (default rate and severity) and other loan characteristics (interest rate, credit score, prepayment penalty, etc) used as justification for client loan loss reserve calculation in anticipation of SEC audit.
• Assisted in writing, editing, and formatting documentation of company model for forecasting of non-maturing deposit balances.
• Assisted in process documentation, training, and transition of VP of Financial Analytics.
• Reviewed monthly loan level pricing calculations on loan sales and securitizations for purpose of allocating revenues to operating branches at Option One Mortgage.
• Created executive reports and charts for related to liquidity analysis and cash forecasting.
• Completed 36-month business plan which led to formation of new national accounts division at People's Choice Home Loan.
• Developed commission compensation model for retail and wholesale division sales associates at People's Choice Home Loan.
• Designed spreadsheet analytical models for evaluation and pricing of mortgage loan portfolios at Household Financial Services.
• Analyzed credit risk of companies seeking commercial financing and monitored existing credits through analysis of company financials, market research, and regular contact with company management.
• Provided investor reporting of owned and securitized mortgage loan portfolios for contractual compliance, including consolidation of third-party servicers.

Systems Expertise: Selected Detail

Microsoft Excel
• Microsoft Certified Excel Expert (2007 and 2003 versions).
• Expert Level Excel User including graphing presentations (multiple chart types, trend lines, secondary axes, axis scales, creating thermometer and speedometer charts), data validation, regression analysis, conditional formatting, usage of analytical tools (tracing dependents and precedents, Goal Seeker), financial functions (PMT, FV, PV, NPV, RATE, and IRR), logical and nested functions (IF, AND, OR, and NOT functions in formulas), informational functions (ISERROR, ISNA, ISBLANK), string, date and time functions, statistical functions (MIN, MAX, MEDIAN, STDEV), lookup functions (VLOOKUP, HLOOKUP, INDEX, OFFSET), worksheet sharing and protection, and customization of toolbars.
• Proficient user in pivot tables, macro creation, and hyperlink creation.

Microsoft PowerPoint
• Advanced Level PowerPoint User including creating slide masters, working with templates and layouts, inserting objects (pictures, symbols, charts, sound), creating graphs, working with embedded and/or linked objects, slide transition and animation as well as creating and running slide shows.

Hyperion Essbase
• Advanced Level Hyperion Essbase User including using retrievals with required and optional dimensions, member selection, suppressing zeros, formula preservation, drill-down options, indentation, and lock and sends.

Microsoft Access
• Proficient Level Access User with experience developing tables (from raw data sets, data importing, establishment of primary fields and keys, redefinition of field properties), creating reports (for sorting data, creating subtotals, totals, group footers/headers, formatting text and report layout) and data query.

Other
• Working experience with the following: Great Plains, Lawson, PeopleSoft Financials, Microsoft Visio, Crystal Reports.

Education & Credentials

• University of Wisconsin, Madison - BA, Accounting
• CPA, State of Illinois