Dear School Business Professionals,
Sharing some good news . . . please feel free to share this communication with other staff members at your district.
We are pleased to announce that we have hired Stephen Williams to join the District Financial Advisors Team in SBAS.
Stephen comes to our office with a strong governmental accounting background and has previously worked with many of our staff members in SBAS as we work with the Auditor-Controller’s office. His professional background includes working at the County of Santa Barbara for the past 15 years in a variety of increasingly responsible accounting positions. He began his work as an Accountant-Auditor I, II, and III in Financial and Customer Service (FACS), Advanced Accounting, and Internal Audit. Then, he worked as a Cost Analyst focused on financial reporting, budget and costs including indirect costs. Stephen became the FACS supervisor in 2015, and for the last several years he has been the Chief Financial Officer in Public Works – Water Resources Division. He holds a Bachelor of Arts in Business-Economics with an Accounting Emphasis from the University of California at Santa Barbara.
Throughout his professional experiences, he has supervised large accounting teams (12-15 staff), overseen all A/P (including 1099 vendor reporting) and A/R processes, reconciled all County warrant and payroll payable funds, supervised and coordinated the timeline and provided training to all county staff for the year-end close process. As an auditor, he has direct experience with internal control assessments, operational audits, fraud investigations and financial statement audits. Stephen has also worked with programmers to test and develop new financial system applications as well as reading and writing SQL queries to improve Auditor-Controller financial systems. Through his work at the Auditor Controller’s Office, he has supported other departments by performing budget reviews and provided support and advice regarding individual departmental goals and initiatives. In his most recent position, he was responsible for a $45M budget as the Chief Financial Officer for the Public Works Division.
We are working on district assignments for the DFAs for the upcoming First Interim Budget Review process. We will send the information about assignments in a separate email to districts.
His first day will be November 23. Please join me in welcoming Stephen to our team.
Denice
Denice Cora Administrator, School Business Advisory Services Santa Barbara County Education Office (805) 964-4710 x5237