Ashley Petak

• Serving as the Army’s Program Manager for Department of Defense (DOD) Financial Management Certification Program (FMCP), Ms. Petak was responsible for overseeing roughly 16,000 Army members, component administrators, and supervisors within the federally mandated DFMCP program.
• Managed the implementation, sustainment, and operations of the Army’s FM Certification Program and assessing and monitoring program performance and effectiveness in order to implement improvements.
• Interpreted financial policies to develop new methods and procedures to improve the Army’s program effectiveness. Ms. Petak reviewed OUSD(C) and Army policies and procedures to develop and successfully issued new guidance to enhance the Army's FM Certification program business processes and daily operations. Ms. Petak was successful in issuing Army’s first enterprise level policies, as well as a few internal handbooks, for the Army’s DFMCP as a result of her policy gap analysis.
• Analyzed data to identify trends and develop recommendations from identified trends. This was done by summarizing data from the program’s system of record database for reporting purposes and providing status by Command. Utilizing various data systems and tools, including ADVANA and Power BI to reconcile the Army FM personnel and prepare status reports and various data metrics for leadership across the enterprise.
• Introduced more efficient methods to provide financial management information for business operations and manager decision making through collaboration with the Army’s Robotics Process Automation (RPA) team.
• Responsible for over 17,000 lines of data clean-up and maintenance efforts across 13,000 organizational hierarchies within LMS; provide data analysis to identify trends across the program; and data manipulation in order to create and provide regular status reports and metrics Army-wide.
• Participated in Army’s Financial Statement Audit and successfully enhanced financial reporting accuracy by streamlining data collection and analysis processes for the Army’s DFMCP entity level controls testing.
• Supported Army’s FM strategic campaign plan efforts and collaborated with leadership and various stakeholders in not only developing key strategic goals and initiatives but executing them, as well.
• Collaborated with the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense, Comptroller (OUSD(C)) to support the DOD Strategic Workforce Plan and initiatives for the Department of Army.

• Developed a strong knowledge of and applied various DoD policies, including Planning, Programming, Budgeting and Execution, fiscal law, policies, regulations, principles, standards and procedures to financial management activities.
• Monitored Army's audit recommendations received from various external organizations and assisted in preparation of audit reports to communicate findings and recommendations to key stakeholders.
• Identified and reported audit issues internally. Developed risk assessments and prioritized severity of risks impacting Army's ability to obtain financial audit opinion.
• Oversee and monitor progress of the Army’s five year auditability strategy plans through an Integrated Project Plan (IPP). Developed key milestones for audit readiness and produced audit reports. Collaborated with key stakeholders across financial organizations Army-wide to agree upon approach in achieving audit readiness within five-year timeframe.

• Managed and motivated employees to be productive and engaged in their work. Interfaced with client on a day-to-day basis and directed the completion of project specific tasks within estimated periods and budget constraints.
• Enhanced customer satisfaction by resolving disputes promptly, maintaining open lines of communication, and ensuring high-quality service delivery.
• Engaged with employees regularly and plays an active role in mentoring and counseling sessions. Provided employee support and assistance to reach success based on their career and objectives, while ensuring client deliverables and satisfaction are met.
• Advised and oversaw policies and controls for the obligation and expenditure of funds per the project.
• Successful track record of meeting client expectations in terms of high quality deliverables and within desired timeframe.
• Prepared project’s monthly labor utilization, Waterfall, Burn Rate reports and other Project Status reports and brief project’s internal operations monthly to Chief Executive Officer (CEO) and Chief Operating Officer (COO).

Office of Assistant Secretary of the Army and Financial Management & Comptroller, General Fund Audit Readiness (GFAR)

• Supported a broad range of financial management services and audit readiness and remediation of the Army General Fund Financial Statement audit.
• Supported the end-to-end audit life cycle encompassing all twelve financial statement business processes and Information Technology (IT) work streams has assisted the Army with improving upon their audit infrastructure, which is the core foundation of audit.
• Assisted with the development of Statement of Budgetary Resources (SBR) training material and conducted on-site training across Program Executive Offices (PEO).
• Utilized data from financial management systems, including GFEBS transactions, to maintain data integrity on SBR audit related activities.
• Performed high quality review process of managing, reviewing and delivering the Prepared By Client (PBC) and Sample requests with proper document retention; participating in auditor’s test of design (TOD) and test of effectiveness (TOE) walk throughs, researching and applying Federal mandated compliance and regulations to respective work streams; and overall efficient and effective audit coordination and liaison support.
• Provided consistent support to the Army Commands, System PMOs, Service Providers and internal technical business process teams to appropriately address the true root causes of the auditor’s findings and monitoring the full corrective action plan (CAP) cycle from development through full execution and validation.
• Advised the Army to implement changes and instill a culture of accountability Army-wide by developing and coordinating reoccurring Senior Responsible Official (SRO) synchronization calls that allows the responsible CAP owner to provide CAP milestone progress via a Scorecard template to brief the status of their corrective actions to the Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Army of Financial Operations (DASA-FO) and other high level Army leadership.
• Analyzed data provided across the financial statement business processes for the SBA audits and identifies trends to develop reporting metrics and graphs to present audit progress throughout the Army.
• Developed and reviewed various ad hoc reports and briefings that are presented to 3-star level SES Army leadership meetings with external organizations, including the Office of Secretary of Defense (OSD) and the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO).

District of Columbia Courts, Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Circular A-123 Consulting Services

• Effectively managed multiple competing priorities while maintaining focus on delivering exceptional results for clients and the organization.
• Consistently maintained strong relationships with clients, ensuring clear communication and timely updates on project progress.
• Provide internal control program implementation services in accordance with the requirements of the OMB Circular A-123.
• Provide documentation, assessment and testing of five of the DC Courts’ material financial line item business processes, including the budget process from budget formulation through budget execution and financial reporting.
• Identify and define material risks within each business process and interviewing key stakeholders to understand the process and create documentation such as process flow charts and narrations with the goal of complete process narratives.

Team Lead, Asset Management Contract Support, Department of Navy

• Lead contract support for assertions within the Financial Improvement and Audit Readiness (FIAR) guidance.
• Optimize and manage audit readiness efforts, work plans, and tasks within the Asset Management team.
• Provide program management support and implementation of Financial Improvement Plans with associated work product documentation and priorities.
• Map current business processes and offer recommendations for improvement.
• Identify process mitigations to improve material weaknesses through corrective action plans.
• Engage with key stakeholders within Commands or Department organizations in order to meet milestones and demonstrate accountability for equipment and other assets.
• Determine business process are compliant with all applicable Federal mandates.
• Address accounting concerns, audit risks, and lack of property accountability ownership that may impact financial reporting.

Contract Support, Office of the Under Secretary of Defense

• Provided audit readiness and remediation support to the client, as well as the other defense organizations.
• Reviewed work product deliverables to ensure key support documents were complete and accurate to mitigate risk of material misstatement.
• Conducted interviews with key business users to collect information on business processes and user requirements.
• Assisted with the extensive research and complex development of various training modules relevant to DoD policies, systems and procedures.

Budget Support, Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), NAS Defense Program (NDP)

• Provided complete oversight and applied the Planning, Programming, Budgeting and Execution process of all budgetary and accounting relations within NDP account, totaling $120 million annually.
• Tracked and monitored project status and obligation rates, and analyzed budgets through utilizing various financial systems, including Oracle Financials, on current fiscal year NDP reimbursable agreements in compliance with statuary and regulatory guidance, including Anti Deficiency Act.
• Analyzed obligation rates and expenditure rates to complete budget execution reports and managed budget requirements through forecasting and justifying budgets in compliance with statutory and regulatory guidance.
• Coordinated project set up in the accounting system and facilitated the issuance of Budget Authority/ Project Authorization (BA/PA).
• Developed internal tracking metrics to thoroughly monitor the various stages the BA/PA requests were in and to closely observe the organization’s allotted fund apportionment.
• Developed various excel-based financial reports on a monthly basis and updated internal databases to track the budgetary status of all projects.
• Provided careful review to ensure all BA/PA requests submitted by the NDP office were accurate and in compliance with FAA internal processes and all applicable Federal regulations and statutes.
• Performed proper and thorough review to ensure that appropriate funds and supporting documentation, including Military Interdepartmental Purchase Requests (MIPRs), Interagency Agreements (IAs), and Memorandum of Agreements (MOAs), have been received from various sponsors.
• Assisted the NDP Office with budget execution activities by developing the organization’s financial plans for the upcoming fiscal year to submit requests to Congress and OMB for fund apportionment.
• Provided end to end oversight support of budgetary activities that include monitoring, tracking, reporting, analyzing, and reconciling large financial data files utilizing the FAA’s core accounting system, Delphi.