Work

Dan helps small to mid-sized businesses and nonprofits improve financial management through planning, analysis and process/system improvements. He is available on a consulting or part-time basis. As a former CFO, he combines financial knowledge and experience with advanced IT skills, excellent communications, and creative problem-solving. He also brings the skills and training of a project manager to keep work moving to completion. For more information about consulting services, see the Consulting Page.

History of Work in Finance, IT, and Project Management.

After completing his MBA at Miami University, Dan began his career with a Fortune 500 manufacturing firm in their IT department. There he maintained financial modelling tools written in Fortran77 and did statistical analysis using SAS. During that time, he participated in a CMA (Certified Management Accounting) review course sponsored by his employer and passed the exam.

Move to Finance

That helped him move to the corporate finance staff, first to the Financial Planning Department where he did budgeting, performed special projects, and created a large-scale model to do the company’s five-year financial forecast. One the more interesting special projects that Dan did was to work with the CFO to create the graphics for the presentation by the corporation’s president to the annual shareholder meeting. He continues to use what he learned from that experience about presenting financial data in graphs and tables.

Then Dan moved to Financial Analysis where he did discounted, cash flow analysis of alternative for business decisions and capital investments. He created financial models to calculate the incremental cash flow of projects including: potential/new product lines, pricing negotiations with automotive manufacturers and other major customers, communication technology decisions, joint venture negotiations, and make-vs-buy decisions. He routinely presented the results of analysis to the CEO, CFO, and others. That was fun stuff for a young MBA.

Both of those roles enabled Dan to learn so much about corporate finance and business planning that he felt like he got a second MBA. Also in those roles, Dan established the reputation of being the finance guy who was a wiz at using information technology. Finance and sometimes even IT people went to him when they needed help solving problems that stumped them. That ability to creatively use technology to do financial planning and analysis has been a common thread throughout his career. That ability has been based on attitude, creativity, and IT knowledge.

Later, Dan served as the controller of a small company that did contract manufacturing (i.e. machining, welding/fabricating, and coating). That was excellent exposure to the nuts and bolts of every day accounting. He also learned job and project costing/reporting.

CFO in Higher Education

Several years later, Dan served as the Chief Fiscal Officer of a community college. He was originally hired as the Vice President of Administration responsible for IT, facilities and maintenance, institutional research, and auxiliary services. During that time he arranged the financing for a construction and renovation project which gave him the opportunity to make several presentations to the Board of Trustees. As a result, he was asked to assume leadership for the College’s finances and accounting.

That was a time when state colleges and universities in Ohio were under tremendous financial pressures due to cuts in state support. So, Dan had the opportunity to hone his budgeting, forecasting, and reporting skills. Dan worked with the Controller to implement new financial reporting software and completely revise the financial reports provided to the Board of Trustees. He also created monthly budgets and forecasts. The opportunity to frequently present budgets and reports on various financial issues to the Board enabled Dan to develop excellent presentation skills. While serving as CFO, Dan also served a term as President of the Ohio Association of Community College Fiscal Officers Group. He greatly enjoyed working with the Ohio Board of Regents (now the Ohio Department of Higher Education) to help craft new formulas to allocate state support to colleges and universities.

Information Technology

​In between financial roles, Dan worked in information technology as a programmer (software developer), business analyst, and CIO. He worked for a major defense contractor on huge project to develop and integrate MRP/ERP software for defense depots. There, Dan was utility player who was moved from one leadership position to another as needs arose. He then went to a software firm that provided ERP systems to a niche sector. There he took advantage of the opportunity to complete project management training sponsored by his employer and received a Master’s Certificate in Project Management from George Washington University/ESI Dan also passed the PMP (Project Management Professional) exam and complete the certification process. He then worked as a Project Manager for several years.

University Teaching

During Dan’s career, he was also and Adjunct Instructor for the University of Dayton’s Decision Sciences Department. There he taught classes in business statistics to students in the School of Business. Although he had taken many statistics classes in his MBA program, it was teaching statistics that gave him a solid understanding of the field. He was one of the first instructors at U.D. to teach and require students to use Microsoft Excel to do statistical analysis.

Academic Education

M. Div. – Saint Paul Lutheran Seminary

MBA – Miami University Farmer School of Business in Oxford, Ohio
Concentration in Decision Sciences / Business Analysis

BSBA – University of Dayton School of Business in Dayton, Ohio
Major in economics, minor in finance

Sinclair Community College in Dayton, Ohio
Dan completed hi first two years of college at Sinclair where he took several classes in IT/coding (it was called programming then) as well as general classes for business majors.

Family

Dan has been married to Marcia for over 40 years. She is a retired accountant/office manager and a part-time church musician. She shares Dan’s love of boating and faith in God. They have two handsome, and very bright sons.

Outdoors

Dan is an avid outdoorsman who loves fishing, hunting, boating, and just about anything outdoors. He hunts pheasants with his bird dog, Phoebe. For the past several years, Dan and Marcia have been vacationing on Lake Huron in the Les Cheneaux Islands in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan where they enjoy boating and fishing. Dan is also an avid gardener of flowers and roses.

Public Speaking

Dan an experienced public speaker who is available to speak to your organization about leadership, history, business and faith. He will also provide training on management, planning, and leadership.

Dan has been preaching at Lutheran churches routinely for several years. He is a graduate of Saint Paul Lutheran Seminary.

Student of History

Dan loves reading about history, especially biographies. He has read a biography of every American president from George Washington to Lyndon Johnson. He is waiting for Robert Caro to finish his epic biography of LBJ before moving to Nixon. Here are some of his favorite books: