SMPH Finance Director

Universities of Wisconsin•Madison, WI

1d•Hybrid

About The Position

The Finance Director provides strategic leadership and oversight for financial planning, budgeting, reporting, analytics, and fiscal operations across the School of Medicine and Public Health (SMPH). This key leadership position directs initiatives that support the effective deployment of financial, administrative, and staffing resources in alignment with organizational priorities and strategic goals. The Finance Director, acting as the Deputy CFO, fosters strong collaboration among SMPH departments and serves as a key partner to UW Medical Foundation and UW Health finance teams, supporting integrated financial reporting, budgeting, and implementation of shared financial initiatives. The position provides financial consultation and decision support to executive leadership through data-driven analysis, performance monitoring, and continuous improvement of financial systems and processes. This role leads financial system development and maintenance across SMPH, in collaboration with UW Madison and UW System. Given the size and complexity of SMPH, this leadership role is highly visible and active in leading and collaborating to improve Workday, Madison Adaptive, and other financial processing and reporting systems. Reporting to the CFO, the Finance Director leads the SMPH fiscal organization through three Associate Directors overseeing shared financial services, budgeting and analytics, and clinical services and fiscal policy. The Finance Director establishes and administers policies and procedures governing financial operations, reporting, compliance, and resource management while ensuring operational excellence and sound financial stewardship. This position is a highly visible role and leads or serves are several school and campus committees. As a strategic advisor and representative of the school, the Finance Director collaborates regularly with the Dean and senior leadership; participates in school-wide and campus-wide committees; and builds partnerships across academic, clinical, and administrative organizations to advance institutional objectives.

Requirements

8+ years of progressive experience in leading financial management, budgeting, accounting, financial analysis, or related functions
Experience developing and implementing financial policies, procedures, and internal controls.
Experience leading financial planning, budgeting, forecasting, and reporting activities.
Experience supervising, developing, and evaluating professional staff.
Experience working with financial management systems, reporting tools, and data analytics platforms.
Experience building collaborative relationships with senior leaders, business partners, and external stakeholders.

Nice To Haves

Experience in higher education, healthcare, or government.
Experience leading cross-functional strategic initiatives and organizational change efforts.
Experience developing financial dashboards, data visualizations, and performance metrics to support executive decision-making.

Responsibilities

Determines personnel needs and the personnel resource allocation plan
Oversees, reviews, develops, recommends, and implements policies and procedures for internal and external financial reporting, budgeting and financial operations
Participates in the development, maintenance, and monitoring of automated financial information systems and budgets, and disseminates updates and results to leadership when appropriate
Serves as a divisional representative and subject matter expert to institutional leadership and internal and external stakeholders providing financial direction and information, fostering collaborative relationships across multiple functional areas, and representing the interests of the division
Exercises supervisory authority, including hiring, transferring, suspending, promoting, managing conduct and performance, discharging, assigning, rewarding, disciplining, and/or approving hours worked of at least 2.0 full-time equivalent (FTE) employees
Responsible for policies and reporting relating to transactions with UW Health. Works with both campus and UW Health staff to accomplish
Directs strategic planning initiatives and establishes objectives for multiple finance functional areas to ensure appropriate use of financial, administrative, and staffing resources and alignment with the strategic plan
Leads the data design and visualization for key operational and financial data analysis used for financial and regulatory reporting as well as operations management and leadership decision making