About
An accountant who understands systems — and why that matters.
I studied computer science, built my career in accounting, and now work where the two meet: making sure the numbers leadership relies on are right — and making them faster to reach.
My first roles were in IT, designing business applications and pulling data for accounting teams who needed answers the standard reports could not give them. That work taught me something I still use every week: the system you choose decides which questions your finance team can answer.
In 2005 I moved into accounting leadership, running the accounting department of a Los Angeles customs brokerage — payroll, cash flow, variance analysis, and the operating procedures behind them. Because I understood the technology, I also led the move to paperless workflows and PCI compliance. I am licensed as a CPA by the California Board of Accountancy.
In Seattle I worked as a senior accountant for a 48-location restaurant group and then for Car Toys / Wireless Advocates, where the month-end close, CAPEX and depreciation schedules, and an enterprise system migration sat alongside the financial models and Tableau and Power BI dashboards I built for leadership.
At Space Needle and Chihuly Garden and Glass I spent four years as Assistant Controller — directing the month-end close, journal entry approval, internal controls, payroll, and the annual audit with a team of five to eight. In 2021 I moved into FP&A: budgeting, forecasting, board-level reporting, and capital planning, and I led the organization-wide conversion to Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central.
Today, as Finance Manager of Finance Analytics & AI, most of my work connects the general ledger to everything that explains it — attendance, labor, pricing, and demand — in planning and reporting environments that leadership uses directly. I build much of that with AI-assisted development. The controllership years are why I trust the result: when a dashboard and the ledger disagree, I know which one to believe, and how to find out why.
Four working principles.
Start from the ledger
Every management number should reconcile to something an auditor would recognize. Analytics that cannot tie out do not survive a close.
Automate the preparation, not the judgment
Technology should remove the hours spent assembling information so that people spend them deciding what it means.
Prefer the defensible number
A smaller figure that holds up under a control test is worth more than a larger one that does not. I would rather report less and be right.
Build for the person reading it
A CFO, a department head, and an auditor need different views of the same truth. Good information architecture gives each of them theirs.
Where I am spending my learning time.
Continuous learning is part of the job when the tools change this quickly. These are the areas I am actively working in now.
Agentic finance workflows
Where multi-step agents can safely take on close and reporting tasks, and where they should stop and ask.
LLM workflow design
Structuring prompts, context, and review steps so that output is repeatable enough to rely on.
AI governance in finance
Practical control frameworks for AI-assisted preparation, review, and audit evidence.
AI-assisted forecasting
Combining statistical models with language models to explain forecast movements, not only produce them.
n8n automation
Connecting finance systems through workflows that are visible and maintainable by the finance team.
Modern finance analytics
Cloud data platforms and semantic models that let finance own its metric definitions.
Contact
Modernizing finance without loosening what makes it right?
I welcome conversations with finance leaders, executive recruiters, and organizations working on accounting, FP&A, and finance transformation.