What is your role in the Service Center of Excellence?
My role is to lead the finance area within the Service Center of Excellence (SCE), where we are bringing together more than 50 staff members to provide a variety of functions throughout the Division, including procurement, payment of invoices, travel authorizations and reimbursements, purchase card reconciliations and a variety of other finance transactional functions. We will also be facilitating our customers’ campus billing applications and customer billing throughout the month, and, in addition to that, we will be developing a robust reporting environment, including all-funds budgeting and routine reporting, which we will be distributing out to all departments in the Division. We will develop a finance service team that will work as strategic partners who will support departments in meeting their business needs and interfacing with other service center staff members.
What did you do before you came to the SCE?
I have worked for the university for 19 years and have led a variety of operating units within Facilities Services, including finance, procurement, warehousing, information technology and human resources, and some campus-facing areas, such as mail services, recycling and waste, and the fleet services. Years ago, before my work in Facilities, when I first came to UNC, I worked in the Medical School’s Department of Epidemiology, on the Women’s Health Initiative Study as a business manager.
Within Facilities Services I’ve had opportunities to partner with many different people across the Division of Finance and Administration and over the course of the last year, as we’ve been planning to launch the SCE, I’ve learned a lot more about the intricacies of their operations and how we might better be able to support them in achieving their initiatives and strategic goals.
Why are you excited about joining the SCE?
As we’ve been doing the planning for the SCE, I see so many opportunities for us to first bring employees together and have them work with peers who are doing similar work and really build their competencies where they may not have had the chance to build those before. I think we have the opportunity to provide standard services throughout the Division so our customers will benefit from having a service level they can really count on — that’s one of our main goals. We also plan to improve current processes in a way that will allow us to direct our future efforts toward building new processes that may be needed and reducing the current costs of services.
One of the most rewarding parts of this implementation process has been the one-on-one meetings I have had with staff members. We have so many kind and genuine people already contributing so much as they go about their day-to-day work, and I’m excited to work with them in the SCE. Every person I’ve met with has been so supportive of the process, and I have seen that shift in my conversations with staff go from, “How is this is going to affect me?” to more like, “How are we going to make this work?” I guess I can say that I’ve seen the “we” start to happen. And that’s exciting.
I’m genuinely excited to work in the new location in Carrboro and have all of us together in one collaborative work environment. I’m also looking forward to having access to a fun environment with restaurants, shops and trails.
What do you enjoy doing in your free time?
I have two children, a husband and a brand new puppy, and so I spend the majority of time either visiting my oldest child in college, participating in school events with my youngest child or training our puppy. I am an avid reader, and whenever I have spare time I do participate in a book club. I love gardening but don’t have much time to do it right now.
What is something people probably wouldn’t know about you?
People may not know that I’m considered the “handy person” in our household! I have always been interested in building and fixing things, and I handle all the handiwork around the house, including installing and refinishing hardwood floors. I ask for tools for presents!