Matthew Pugh

I run the operations and finance side of small organizations. At my last two I was second in command to the senior leader and the first person to hold the role, so the job started with writing the first policies and building the books and records from scratch, then running them day to day.

Most recently I was Assistant Director at an international development nonprofit with U.S. and Kenya operations. I worked as chief of staff to the Founder and President: his calendar and inbox, travel for individuals and full teams, and the decisions that got routed to me when he was not available. I oversaw the staff accountant and the development of the financial statements, supported the annual Form 990, and owned fund tracking in QuickBooks. I made sponsorship award decisions with the President and our director in Kenya, wrote every report back to our foundation and institutional funders, and tracked spend and compliance conditions against grant budgets. I staffed the advisory board and the leadership committees. I also designed and led a year-long study of 150 sponsored students and wrote the findings report, which the organization adopted as its reported outcome metrics. That job was fully remote across a seven-hour time difference.

Before that I was Operations Director at a two-site organization with a $1.1 million budget, 22 staff, and 38 volunteers. I owned the full accounting cycle in QuickBooks, closed the month in five to seven days, and prepared the balance sheet and statement of activities with a written analysis of every expenditure. I held the banking relationship with full signature authority, managed the invested funds across financial institutions, administered the corporate credit program, and negotiated our payroll, insurance, and legal relationships. I handled contracts, hiring and onboarding, HR policy, and the reporting cadence the board ran on. We closed under budget every year and the reserve grew every year, which paid for a widening capital expenditure schedule.

Earlier I managed live event production on a weekly schedule averaging 70 people on stage and 600 to 800 in attendance, and before that I held four client accounts at a marketing agency, where I invoiced clients and tracked project costs against their budgets. I served in the Marine Corps as a Security Force Guard, and I finished a BBA in International Business summa cum laude with a 4.0.

What I want next is operations or business management: operations manager or director, business manager, chief of staff, program manager, or grants and contracts administration. Roles where finance is part of the work rather than all of it are the best fit. I am open to central Kentucky or fully remote, and I am glad to travel, including heavy travel.

Outside of work I have followed the clean energy sector closely for years and drive an EV, and I have spent a lot of time around live production and the technical side of events, which is where I started.