B.E. Smith Seeks CFO for Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium
August 5, 2020 – Chief financial officers continue to be in high demand. Finding them is keeping many of the nation’s top recruitment operations busier than ever. B.E. Smith, a healthcare-focused executive search firm, was recently called in by non-profit Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium (ANTHC) to lead its search a new CFO. Andrea Merideth is heading the assignment.
The CFO provides strategic and financial leadership for the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium with oversight areas that include the financial services division, the development of short- and long-term financial plans, organizational budget management and advisement, capital planning and revenue integrity optimization.
The non-profit is seeking a collaborative leader who can develop strong teams and build effective relationships with stakeholders across all departments, the ANTHC board and partner organizations across the state, said B.E. Smith. Candidates should have a master’s degree in accounting, business administration, finance or a related field. They must also bring upwards of 10 years of CFO or executive-level financial leadership experience in a healthcare setting of similar size and complexity.
The Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium is a joint commission accredited health organization providing primary care, pharmacy services, physical therapy, surgery centers and multi-specialty clinics to more than 180,000 Alaska Native and American Indian people of the state. It is the largest, most comprehensive tribal health organization in the country, employing more than 3,000 people and operating Alaska’s first Level II trauma center.
Founded in 1978, Lenexa, KS-based B.E. Smith is a full-service healthcare interim leadership placement and executive search firm. For nearly a decade, the organization has been recognized annually by Modern Healthcare as one of the top search firms in its sector. The firm places interim leaders and executives across all healthcare settings, including acute care hospitals, academic medical and children’s hospitals, physician practices and post-acute care providers.
Among its past searches B.E. Smith has helped to place the president and CEO for the Washington Permanente Medical Group, CEO for Rochelle (IL) Community Hospital and group chief financial officer for Bon Secours Mercy Health.
Ms. Merideth is an experienced recruiter with a demonstrated history of working in the hospital and healthcare industry. She recently worked with Bon Secours Mercy in Cincinnati, OH, to recruit its group CFO to lead financial operations for the Great Lakes Group, which is composed of 14 hospitals in Ohio.
CFOs for Non-Profits
For corporate finance executives who want to de-stress their lives, moving into the non-profit world is one obvious avenue. But a new report by professional services firm BDO USA pointed out that some of the issues they would face there might remind them of their for-profit jobs. For one, their fellow C-suiters may not fully appreciate some of the challenges CFOs face. Non-profit CFOs are much more attuned to the difficulty of dealing with regulatory and legislative changes.
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Like their for-profit counterparts, non-profit CFOs have also been tasked with assessing the impact of the new tax-reform law, implementing the necessary changes and determining the most beneficial tax strategies going forward. They were also involved in implementing accounting changes for revenue recognition and leasing arrangements. Finally, the CFOs were somewhat less concerned about cybersecurity than were the others. Exactly half of the former respondents, but 57 percent of the latter, said it’s a high or moderate challenge for non-profits’ boards.
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BDO appeared to lightly criticize the finance chiefs for not taking cybersecurity seriously enough, saying that “CFOs could be overlooking tech-related challenges.”
“While information technology is often not under [non-profit] CFOs’ immediate responsibilities,” BDO said in its survey report, “the security of financial technology systems — including donor databases — is a crucial element of a non-profit’s overall cyber hygiene.
“Anecdotally,” the report said, “protecting organizations from cyber threats is consistently on board agendas. A CFO’s role might primarily live within the organization’s finance arm, but as veterans of the non-profit space know well, an effective leader in the dynamic non-profit world is a jack of all trades.”
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Contributed by Scott A. Scanlon, Editor-in-Chief; Dale M. Zupsansky, Managing Editor; and Stephen Sawicki, Managing Editor – Hunt Scanlon Media
