Thirty years in the seats you are working to strengthen.
Clients do not engage a team of junior consultants. They engage a principal who has personally held the roles under review — county Chief Financial Officer, founding city CFO, and City Manager.
Executive leadership
City or Town Manager of four full-service organizations.
Across these appointments: surfaced fiscal and governance risk, led corrective restructuring, and secured operating and grant funding at scale.
City of San Bernardino, California
Full-service city — 15 departments and more than 1,000 employees. Roughly 220,000 residents, with a service population exceeding 280,000: water, airport and certain public-safety services extend beyond the municipal boundary.
City of Avondale, Arizona
Full-service city management.
City of Watsonville, California
Full-service city management.
Town of Florence, Arizona
Town management.
County & municipal finance
Budgets at the scale Unlok now advises.
Not analysis of someone else’s numbers — direct responsibility for them, through separately elected offices, downturns and rating reviews.
- Chief Financial Officer, Jefferson County, Colorado (2014–2016) — a $1.5 billion all-funds budget spanning separately elected offices, with more than 2,000 employees.
- Identified a projected $500 million five-year operating shortfall and roughly $1 billion in unfunded capital needs across a seven-year capital plan — and built the plan that closed them.
- Founding Chief Financial Officer, City of Centennial, Colorado — built a new city’s finance function, revenue and expenditure structure, and initial credit ratings from nothing.
- More than $4.5 billion in bonds and capital financing issued or managed.
- Credit rating upgrades with Moody’s and S&P in consecutive downturn years.
State government
Both sides of the state house.
Service in the executive branch as an executive management and budget analyst, and in the legislative branch as a legislative financial and budget analyst — two perspectives that rarely sit in the same career.
Systems & organizational design
The plumbing behind the reporting.
- Five public-sector ERP implementations.
- Position-classification and organizational assessments — mapping how financial and administrative functions are distributed, where risk and duplication concentrate, and how structure and staffing align for consistent service at a sustainable cost.
Breadth of operations
Beyond the finance department.
Monterey Bay Community Power
Founding Operations Board Chair.
Stood up a community-choice energy provider serving 1.1 million customers across 35 communities and four counties.
Credentials & service
Education, service and professional bodies.
- Master of Legal Studies, Arizona State University
- Master of Public Administration, University of New Mexico
- Bachelor of Business Administration, New Mexico State University
- U.S. Navy Reserve veteran
- Bilingual — English and Spanish
Extended capability
Depth added to a scope — not layers between you and it.
Every engagement is led and delivered by the principal. Where a scope calls for specialist work, it is performed by vetted associates engaged for that engagement and directed by the principal — including a licensed Professional Engineer and a licensed real estate professional.
Associates are disclosed to the client before they are engaged, and any relationship bearing on the subject of a review is disclosed in writing.
Every engagement is delivered by the principal.
The analysis, judgment and recommendations come from an executive who has done the work — not observed it.