Every day, I have the absolute privilege of being able to work with an extraordinary team of fun, engaged, hard-working and bright colleagues. Together we have successfully navigated significant transformational changes. In early 2021, I joined this organization which had just originated from the amalgamation of the Canadian Foundation for Healthcare Improvement and the Canadian Patient Safety Institute, and I participated in setting up the new financial and operational reporting structure. Since then, it has been a fun ride as I have developed strong relationships with the heads of operational departments and have become their trusted advisor. As such, I make sure to sit at the table when initiatives are being discussed and I provide insight in terms of financial implications, risks and opportunities. At HEC, I am not just a Finance Business Partner but a "Partner" in general as my areas of focus extend to flagging limitations to our policies and procedures, interpreting contract legal clauses, and supporting financial systems implementation.I can't wait to see what the future will bring for HEC and the exciting opportunities that lie ahead! We have such an amazing team at HEC and with the guidance from our visionary Board, our diligent and dedicated President & CEO and Vice-President, Corporate Services and our talented Finance Director, we have a tremendous opportunity to drive the future of health in Canada and support all the bright initiatives.I truly believe that calling HEC a great organization would be an understatement!

As my first role as a Finance Business Partner, my responsibility was to support 7 operational cost centers of the Royal College (RC) and 10 international clients through its subsidiary “Royal College Canada International (RCCI)”. I was responsible and accountable for providing leadership, decision support and guidance to my clients in support of the organizations objectives.For each business decision, my internal clients at RC had to make, I was analyzing the business cases, the project plans and the contracts to ensure alignment with internal policies but I was also flagging risks and opportunities and sometimes challenging their underlying assumptions. I also function as a “Translator” between Finance and Operations, making it easy for the RC internal clients to align themselves with our processes, policies and procedures.In this role, I provided costing and pricing structures for different services (Faculty Development, Webinars, Accreditation, etc.) offered through the subsidiary RCCI to international clients in Asia, Latin America and the Middle East and for some of those clients, I even suggested new pricing models that allowed for program growth, investments and cost savings for RCCI.During my time at the RC and RCCI, I continually strived for excellence, accountability and ethical behaviour.

In this position, I worked in collaboration with the Director of International Services to lead the overall financial administration of 4 Field Support Services Projects (FSSP) funded by Global Affairs Canada (GAC).Working at WUSC gave me the foundation and a broad perspective on providing corporate support to international projects. I had the chance to work with the Project Directors and Finance Officers located in foreign countries and provide them with expertise in setting up the financial structure of new project initiatives and training on internal control methodology.In this role, I was ensuring all field offices transactions were properly captured and issued for Management different statistical and variance analyses along with project milestones analysis to convey a “Big Picture” understanding of each line of revenues per project.Something very valuable I gained in this role is my capacity to face challenges, develop solutions and negotiate. Mentored and coached by the Director of International Services, I had to negotiate in person on multiple occasions with Global Affairs Canada officials new contracts or amendments to our funding agreements following unforeseen situations arising from strict compliance with initial terms. This allowed me to develop a capacity to persuade and influence while at the same time remaining diplomatic.I am certain that this Senior Financial Analyst position at WUSC was the stepping stone for my next role as a Finance Business Partner.

After my short-term contract at the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) I found my next opportunity as Finance officer with the Faculty of Common Law at the University of Ottawa. I worked in collaboration with the Finance Manager, supervised the Finance assistant to help coordinate the financial planning, monitoring and reporting of operational, research and trust accounts of the faculty and the 8 centres of excellence. My role involved tasks such as preparing operational accounts budgets for professors and researchers, ensuring transactions pertaining to the Accounts Payable and Accounts Receivables were entered in the financial system and following up on outstanding receivables, etc. In general, I acted as a source of reliable information for professors, researchers and centres of excellence on financial matters.I only had a short tenure at the Faculty of Common Law because 5 months after I joined, the faculty underwent personnel re-structuring and my position was eliminated.

I accepted this short-term contract in my quest to further my knowledge. I was allowed to work closely with a tightly knit finance team and support them with different accounting functions such as analyzing Conference chargebacks, gathering and analyzing Key Performance Indicators and analyzing investment impairment on a monthly basis.I also supported the team processing transactions in the newly implemented travel and expense submission tool.

After my contract with the Research and Trust department at the University of Ottawa, I left to work for the House of Commons. The House of Commons at the time was undergoing a personnel restructuring, which resulted in the creation of new finance roles. Some of those roles were being offered as contracts in the beginning as a beta test. Personally, I accepted this short-term contract as a Financial Review Officer in my quest to broaden my mind and learn something new.There, I covered a portfolio of 25 House members by reviewing the qualitative and quantitative information of their reports and taking pro-active steps to resolve discrepancies or errors before public disclosure. Although it was a short-term role, it was still a fun role as I learned a new financial software “Peoplesoft” and I got to interact and speak in person with House Members and their assistants!

In this position, I was responsible for a portfolio of 280 research funds and part of a team that managed research grants, accounts held in trust, and endowments for the University’s researchers. I would ensure to allocate funds correctly to ensure that all requirements set by funding agencies and donors to the University are met. I would also prepare financial reports for various funding agencies and conduct different financial analyses for internal and external stakeholders.I sharpened my time management skills in that position as I was able to work and deliver under constant pressure and with changing priorities.

This was a contract and my very first position upon arriving in Canada. Surely as any new landed immigrant will know, that was my opportunity for my first Canadian experience. I actively participated in the effective functioning of the Accounts Payable department by ensuring timely payment of national and global vendors. The tasks involved processing invoices through SAP, ensuring completeness of documentation, liaising with different departments to clarify/verify payment data as required, preparing month end recurring and non-recurring journal entries for legal entities and participating in the month-end close process.My dedication in this role and my professionalism were so much appreciated by my supervisor, who later recommended me for my next role as a Financial Analyst at the Research and Trust department of the University of Ottawa.

In every interesting career, there is often a divergent path that is taken. For me, this was working as a Financial analyst for a commercial bank. I've always been a bit of a go-to person in my family for analyzing business ventures, business models and viability of small projects and this position gave me the opportunity to do that for a commercial bank.In this position, my job was to assess the financial risk of mostly retail clients at the request of the Client relationship managers. I would gather information from appropriate sources to determine clients credit standing, perform loan collateral valuation, independently research information from industry data and maintain proper control of credit risk and compliance using variance analysis in financial statements key components and scenario analysis.I resigned from this position after a year and a half to relocate to Canada.

The National Bureau for Technical and Development Studies is an institution that specializes in implementing economic, social and infrastructure development projects on behalf of the Office of the Prime Minister. My role as a Budget analyst was to review and analyze budget requests, operational and financial data coming from each operational department of the institution and prepare cost-benefits analysis and projections on each project.This was an intermediate accounting position and I was already managing a team of 3 agents. In that role, I learned to develop the financial analysis “Muscle” that will prove an asset later in my career, but also attention to details and an ability to maintain composure and resilience even through competing priorities.I resigned from this position after almost 4 years to pursue an MBA.