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Marin has served at all levels of government. Now she serves as Secretary of State and Consumer Services Agency in California, but has also served as mayor and councilwoman of Huntington Park, with a population that is 99 percent Hispanic. Serving the public, she said is amazing, empowering and humbling, and yet public servants rarely receive the accolades they deserve. “Let me do that,” she told the AGA audience. “Let me do that from the bottom of my heart. I would challenge people to experience the incredible joy of knowing that what you do truly matters.” Marin said that she arrived in the United States from Mexico at the age of 14, unable to speak English. She received a 27 on her first IQ test—the average is 100—but instead of feeling humiliation, she felt a burst of energy and became dedicated to learning English quickly and well. She graduated in the top 20 of her high school class, but could attend college only part-time and at night so she could help support her family. It took her seven years to earn her degree at California State University in Los Angeles. Marin, who started as a receptionist’s assistant at the City National Bank in Beverly Hills, quickly rose through the ranks to become assistant vice president, but when her first child, Eric, was born with Down syndrome, “My entire life as I had known it crumbled.” Her son was ill. She quit her job to care for him. The young family had to sell their home because they could not make the mortgage payments. She rejected the idea of earning a master’s degree.Eventually, she said and after many dark hours, she found a larger purpose. Eric had inspired her sense of activism. By the time Eric was 6, she had helped push through the most sweeping legislative reform in 20 years to help people with disabilities in California. When Eric turned 8, she had been elected mayor of Huntington Park. When Eric was 10 years old, Marin’s dedication to helping people with disabilities earned her the distinguished Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Prize, awarded at the United Nations. At 18, her son cast his first vote for his mother to become the Republican nominee for U.S. Senate. “I discovered that there is a bigger purpose than just me. I discovered what true public service is all about,” she said. No job in government is small, Marin said. “Imagine what a beautiful purpose you have, when you do your job and you do it well.” In Huntington Park, her work affected 85,000 people; in California, her work affects 37 million people and at the federal level, it was 300 million people. “To be able to impact the lives of people we are serving . . . to this day, I get goose bumps.
 Charles A. Bowsher, CPA,
the sixth comptroller general of
the United States, spoke Wednesday morning and noted how large the
PDC has become since the days when he attended during his 1981-1996
term as head of the GAO. Bowsher recently accepted a position as a
member of the Board of Trustees of AGA's newly reinvigorated Academy
for Government Accountability. AGA also recently published the
monograph, The Comptrollers General of the
United States and a Conversation with the Surviving CGs, in
collaboration with Donald Tidrick, Ph.D., the Deloitte
Professor of Accountancy at Northern Illinois University. Bowsher
said he was pleased to continue his long affiliation with AGA.
Download your copy of the Comptroller General
monograph.
Process management takes basic principles and applies them to a variety of disciplines. “These approaches work best when people realize there are no boundaries,” Bush said. He listed the key areas of the Process Management Business Case as:
“Your activities have to be informed by your (customers’) opinions of what you are doing well and not doing well,” Bush said.
Bush concedes that when he moved from the space sector to the CFO spot, process excellence wasn’t his first thought until he realized how completely the finance area affects every corner of the business. As a result, he said, “We tied what we were doing with Sarbanes-Oxley compliance into finance process excellence.” In a company that employs 125,000 people, this kind of change is a “major undertaking,” Bush said. “We have a long way to go until we achieve what we’re aiming for.” He talked about “dashboards” being among the most critical business tools. Dashboards are metrics of expected outcomes and results. Operating a business without this basic information is unimaginable to Bush. “You’re going to find out the bad outcomes when you run out of gas, your engine overheats or you get a speeding ticket,” he said.Bush talked about the new role of CFOs in certifying financial statements in the post-Sarbanes-Oxley environment. “Those of us who are certifying really want to be absolutely confident of what we’re signing off on,” he said, adding that Northrop Grumman is aiming to go beyond compliance with SOX to realizing a significant benefit from the enormous investment the company has made in compliance. Northrop Grumman is known for having stable finances and strong processes, Bush said, but “we’re still finding room for improvement.” Bush admitted that there aren’t many corporate CFOs who will extol the benefits of SOX, but he said, “Sarbanes- Oxley has produced real, tangible benefits to companies that have taken this on in a meaningful way.” Among the many benefits realized by Northrop Grumman, Bush listed:
Bush said that you know you’re engaged in something that’s working when you have people fighting to have their processes reformed. He listed the benefits of the Process Management Business Case as:
In the area of knowledge transfer, Bush noted that they have teamed veteran employees with newer staff. “It creates a very healthy dynamic and a huge transfer of knowledge occurs.” By achieving a real process-oriented environment, Bush said, when something goes wrong the question is not who messed up but where did the process break down. “I would say that’s a much healthier dialog to have,” he said, adding that this outcome was “unexpected by me, but I was delighted to see it.” Bush ended his presentation by listing the three traits he finds in successful people. The first is the ability to solve problems by understanding the human dynamic and arriving at workable solutions. The second is the ability to truly be a member of a team and to make decisions that put the well being of the team ahead of individual gain. Third, Bush looks for a diversity of experience in the people he hires. “I look for those who have taken a chance and done something different,” he said, calling this a “willingness to say yes.” He concluded by adding that the most important trait found in all successful people is a genuine love for what they’re doing. “Bring an absolute personal commitment to your work, enjoy it, and that will show through to others,” he said. By: Christina M. Camara and Marie S. Force View coverage from Monday, June 19 View coverage from Tuesday, June 20
First Internal
Control & Fraud Conference
Second Annual National Performance Management
Conference |
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© Association of Government Accountants 2006 |
The 2005-2006 AGA Program Year came to a ceremonial end
yesterday, the
final day of the Association's 55th Annual Professional Development
Conference & Exposition in San Diego. Outgoing National President
Sam M. McCall, CGFM, CPA, CIA, CGAP (at right in the
photo to the left), passed the gavel to incoming National president
Jeffrey Hart, CGFM. The luncheon and awards ceremony
included the Association's highest honor,
the Robert W. King
Memorial Award, which was presented this year to Past National
Treasurer and former Executive Director Charles W. Culkin
Jr., CGFM (shown in photo to the right with now Immediate
Past National President McCall). McCall discussed the highlights of
his year as president, including the reinvigoration of the Academy of
Government Accountability. Hart covered his theme, "Creating
Exceptional Value for Government Accountability Professionals,"
and outlined his goals for this year, which include putting a strong emphasis on
AGA's core values of Service, Accountability,
Integrity and Leadership. At
Wednesday's luncheon, Past National President Richard V.
Norment, CGFM, CIA (pictured left), invited everyone
to
join the Nashville Chapter for the 2007 PDC, June 24-27, at the
Renaissance Nashville Hotel in Nashville, TN. New Jersey State
Auditor Richard Fair, CGFM (right), now the AGA
National President-Elect, served as the master of ceremonies for the
awards program and luncheon. 
Before becoming the company’s chief financial
officer, Bush ran Northrop Grumman’s Space Technology sector
where he successfully employed the principles of process management.
In the space sector, Bush said there is tremendous pressure to
succeed, since a failure means a lost satellite or rocket.
“They have to work hard to get it right the first time,”
he said.