Mountain Ascent Advisors acts as a trusted advisor helping businesses navigate financial planning, organizational strategy and design, capital structuring, and mergers & acquisitions.

Each year, I mentor a participant in Gonzaga’s professional leadership development program - Certificate of Foundational Leadership.

In this role, I was responsible for oversight of customer engagement and business development, finance and accounting (including budgeting, cash flow modeling, and overall financial management), human resources, technology, strategic and business planning, internal product development, vendor management and negotiations, regulatory compliance, and payer relations. Additionally, I advised on mergers and acquisitions, as well growth strategy for the broader consolidated entity.

As the Manager of Association Reviews, I managed the team that performs independent credit reviews and provides loan review oversight for CoBank's 26 affiliated lending associations (banks), totaling approximately $65 billion in assets.

Spearheaded and led an enterprise-wide Salesforce implementation that included replacing the bank-wide loan origination system. Stood up and chaired the Executive Strategy Committee (which included representation from every functional area of the bank); was responsible for third party strategic relationships and partnerships; designed and oversaw the organizational change management effort; and was responsible for the strategic direction and implementation of the hundreds of staff involved in executing this organizational evolution.

In this role, I oversaw lending for Western Oregon, leading a team of 14 Relationship Managers (Corporate, Commercial, and Home Lenders) with a combined portfolio of roughly $1 billion in assets. During my time in this role, my division had the largest increase in Gallup engagement scores across the organization, and we reversed a declining portfolio trend to end up on a strong growth path before I transitioned to my next role.

Managed $1 billion portfolio of purchased and sold participations and syndications and developed new financing opportunities with Farm Credit aand commercial banking institutions across the country. Indistries primarily consisted of agricultural processing and production, and rural infrastructure (telecommunications, energy, and healthcare).

In this role, I helped to syndicate agent and member financings for some of CoBank’s largest and most complex borrowers in Corporate Finance, Project Finance, and Rural Infrastructure (Ranging $50MM - $1B). I actively developed investor relationships across commercial banking and farm credit sectors and managed investor groups of 30 syndicated and secondary relationships. I also helped found CoBank’s Finance Center of Excellence, which is a group dedicated to keeping CoBank associates educated and informed about financial products, capital markets activity, and the implications of the broader financial markets.CoBank is a $90 Billion bank with over 850 Associates. It is a successful and unique institution that plays an important role in the nation’s rural economy. CoBank is not a retail bank – it doesn’t take deposits, have branches, or offer any consumer products. Instead, CoBank provides loans to vital industries throughout rural America – namely agribusiness and rural utilities. It’s an important niche which supports domestic industries that play a critical role in the national and global economy. CoBank, the largest financial institution headquartered in Colorado, is strong and stable. During the recent economic downturn and banking crisis, CoBank realized record profits and did not receive any government financing.

During my time as a Communications Banking Group Senior Credit Analyst, I supported a portfolio of 37 telecommunications companies through complex financial analysis, modeling long term projections, and effectively collaborating with all stakeholders. Additionally, I would value public and private companies by employing discounted cash flow methodologies, evaluating comparable sales, and adjusting valuation based on the current mergers and acquisitions environment.Member of the Communications Banking Group Center of Excellence where I monitored the Wireless Communications Industry, presented my reports quarterly, and was the primary point of contact for industry information. I also updated the CoBank discounted cash flow methodologies for 2011 and 2012 for the Infrastructure Banking Group (Telecommunications, Energy Project Finance, & G&Ts).

I assisted with organizational structure development, systems creation and implementation for Board reporting, financial reporting and record keeping, asset / liability management, and bank investment strategy.

I performed complex financial and interpretive analysis of various types of commercial credit across industries including real estate, manufacturing, wholesaling, and financial servicesI also created, implemented, and maintained a Loan Portfolio Stress-testing System, an OREO Reporting System, and a Commercial Real Estate Risk Exposure System and annually participated in or led the discussion with federal and state bank examiners on these topics.