By:
William A.
(Billy) Morehead, Ph.D., CGFM, CPA, CPM
WOW! This AGA
year is rapidly moving along. It is even time to start thinking
about your AGA membership renewal, and the 2010–2011 year renewals
are in the mail. I trust you recognize the tremendous value you
receive for your membership. Your benefits include and are not
limited to member discounts at numerous educational events, the
Journal of Government Financial Management and weekly updates on
significant local, state and federal issues affecting our
profession.
AGA works diligently to make sure our chapters receive
the individual attention they need to maintain a steady and healthy
focus. AGA provides audio
conferences and has developed an excellent onsite education course
curriculum available to your agencies and chapters. Did you know
that AGA responds to every GASB and FASAB exposure draft as well as
any FASB or other pronouncement that may impact our members?
Furthermore, you can rest assured that your National Office staff
and you national officers are championing government financial
management issues throughout government and academia to make sure
you have the latest information on laws and regulations affecting
our profession. So, you get quite a “bang for your buck” through
your AGA membership! Even in these tight economic times, it pays to
renew!
I continue to
introduce you to members of our AGA National Office staff. This
month, I want to share information about four more AGA staffers with
you who help ensure you receive part of your member benefits. Joe
Jozefczyk, Lynn Hoffman, Ray Harris and Anna Miller are
each valuable members of “Team AGA”!
Joe Jozefczyk
is AGA’s director of Education and Lynn Hoffman is the
Education Department program coordinator. Together, they direct and
manage AGA’s Education Department. The centerpiece of the department
is the onsite education course curriculum, which currently features
41 individual one- and two-day courses. Developed and taught by
recognized experts and practitioners, the courses cover the fields
of accounting, auditing, ethics, communications and personal
development, among others. The department has grown from offering no
onsite courses three years ago to the 41 courses currently in the
curriculum. And sales of courses have grown from zero to about
$150,000 so far this fiscal year.
Joe and Lynn are
also heavily involved in the annual PDC as the technical director
and program coordinator, respectively. In these roles, they assist
the Technical Committee chairs and members develop the conference
agenda, which generally includes up to 80 different education
sessions.
On a personal note,
Joe retired from the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO)
several years ago after a career that spanned more than 33 years. At
GAO, he served as a human resources and operations director for a
450-member operating division, as a staff member of the Office of
Program Planning and as an audit manager in GAO’s Latin American
Office, located in Panama.
Away from AGA, Joe
is certified as a developmental coach by the United States
Professional Tennis Association and coaches boys and girls high
school tennis at The Potomac School in
McLean,
VA. He is also very active in his community in
Northern Virginia as
the president of his homeowner association and as a politically
appointed member of the Fairfax County Athletic Council. He has also
been the president and member of the Board of Directors of the
Braddock Road Youth Club, which is the “athletic home” of more than
12 sports and about 6,000 families, and the president of the Bishop
Ireton High School Athletic Boosters. Joe's wife
Colleen is also an avid tennis player,
but for some strange reason she refuses to play with Joe. They have
a son and daughter who live and work in the metro D.C. area.
Lynn Hoffman has
worked at AGA for about two years and has been part of the Education
Department since October 2009. Prior to that time, she worked
primarily with AGA’s Performance Reporting Department, and she
continues to assist there. Lynn worked at three other associations
prior to joining AGA and brought with her a vast knowledge of
association operations. She is married and has a son who recently
graduated from Virginia Tech and a daughter who is a high school
senior. When she is not at work, Lynn enjoys spending her time with
her family and friends.
Raymond Harris,
CGFM, is the director of AGA's Chapter Operations. Ray first joined
the National Office staff as director of Education in September
2004. Given his experience and knowledge of chapters, Ray moved into
his current function that provides oversight for AGA's 100 chapters,
15 regions and four sections. He also functions as the national
coordinator for Chapter Development and Assistance to provide
direction to our regional volunteers in developing new chapters and
assisting troubled ones. Ray also produces the AGA audio conference
series of monthly telecasts providing members and nonmembers with
inexpensive, quality CPEs and is also responsible for coordinating
the technical program for AGA's highly successful annual Internal
Control and Fraud Conference held in September. Ray works from his
home office in New York.
Prior to joining AGA,
Ray worked for New York State government for 32 years as an audit
director and later as an assistant to the deputy state comptroller.
Ray has been an AGA member for more than 20 years and has held
various chapter and national positions, including chapter president,
regional vice president and senior vice president at-large, serving
on the National Executive Committee before joining the AGA National
Office team. Ray has earned many AGA national and chapter awards,
including the National President's Award four times.
Anna Miller
started work at AGA in February 2004 as a technical manager with
responsibility for the Financial Management Standards Board (FMSB).
She later became director of Research for the AGA CPAG Research
Program while still retaining her duties as staff liaison to the
FMSB. The FMSB issues comment letters on proposed statements of
standards with relevance to government finance and accounting. Anna
manages all research projects in the CPAG Research Program and, in
addition, conducts some research projects herself.
Anna has been a CPA
for more than 20 years, and is licensed in Texas, Maryland and the
District of Columbia, where she resides with her husband and two
cats. Her interests include reading, especially science fiction,
sewing, travel, comparative religion, animals and languages. She
started her accounting career as an auditor with Touche Ross in
Houston, TX, then moved to Washington, D.C. and became an auditor
for the public television and public radio network, travelling all
over the country to do audits of radio and television stations in
the system.
Anna has worked for
the AICPA as staff of the Government Accounting and Auditing and
Members in Government committees, and for the National Society of
Public Accountants as director of Education. She served as a
professional staff member in the U.S. House of Representatives
Government Reform and Oversight Committee in the subcommittee with
responsibility for oversight of the CFO Act, GPRA, Single Audit Act,
OMB and GAO and for business process improvement methodologies in
general. She has been a prime contractor for the Office of the
Secretary of Defense, evaluating savings from process improvements,
and to do that travelled to Korea, Japan, Hawaii and across the U.S.
In a previous
lifetime, Anna was an English Literature teacher (and head of the
English Department) in an International School in Teheran, Iran,
teaching courses in the International Baccalaureate (IB) program.
Her first degree was an MA in English and Mandarin Chinese from the
University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, Scotland. She later gained an
MBA with a concentration in Accounting, Information Systems and
Quantitative Management Science from the University of Houston,
Houston, TX, and was inducted into Beta Gamma Sigma. She is a member
of American Mensa and a member of the D.C. Board of Accountancy.
Joe, Lynn, Ray
and
Anna each bring excitement to AGA. You can see how fortunate we
are to have each of them as part of Team AGA. Their vast backgrounds
and talents enhance AGA’s ability to reach out into the government
financial management community and deliver the services you need. It
is my privilege to know and work with these four professionals.
Thank you Joe, Lynn,
Ray and Anna.
Through your service
to AGA, we continue to “Think Big! Act Courageously! Make a
Difference!”
Billy