An Ode to Communications
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Posted by: Katie Floyd
Editors Alley
An Ode to Communications
By Jennifer Becker, Financial Services Director, City of Burbank Greetings CSMFO Members and friends! I hope your 2026 is off to a great start – mine certainly is! I am thrilled and honored to be embarking on a three-year term on the CSMFO Board of Directors, and I’ve had so much fun getting started. However, with this new responsibility, I am compelled to let go of a leadership role I’ve held near and dear to my heart – Chair of the Communications Committee. Four years ago, when I was asked by 2022 CSMFO president, Scott Catlett, to join the Communications Committee and serve as Vice Chair, I had no idea what to expect. As a relatively new Finance Director, I wanted to get more involved with CSMFO, but thought
I’d be doing something more…finance-y. I mean, why Communications? Was it because I talk too much? Could they not get other volunteers? Whatever the reason, I was in my era of saying yes to new things, so I joined up with this amazing group of fun
and talented people, and the rest is history. I have learned so much through four years of serving on this Committee. I’ve honed my writing style and grammar skills through writing and editing articles just like this one. I’ve boosted my network by reaching out to members and commercial partners far and wide to provide valuable content for our CSMFO News readers. I’ve found my voice and polished my public speaking skills through participation in the CSMFO Podcast with the incomparable Rich Lee. But the one lesson that has really stood out for me during this time is how critical communication is to every aspect of our careers and our public finance industry. We are living in a time where public trust in government has never been lower, and our responsibilities continue to grow in both volume and complexity. We start out in our careers as Accountants, Payroll Techs and Budget Analysts striving to implement
the latest GASB, follow tax laws, and perfect our revenue projections and our budget spreadsheets. But, as we grow in our careers and become supervisors, managers, and directors, we realize that’s only half of the assignment. As finance professionals,
we make a commitment to not just “getting the numbers right,” but to developing a long-term financial plan and leading responsible financial decision making within our respective organizations. But a plan is only as good as the paper it’s on unless
your organization and your community has bought into it, and that requires…you guessed it…communication! Finance professionals excel at numbers and facts, but communication is an art form requiring a wider skill set than what many of us were taught in accounting school. It’s adopting a writing style that is technically accurate, yet accessible to a community member with no finance background. It’s knowing how to condense complex financial information into manageable bites and putting those bites into context. It’s giving a presentation to your Board our Council that provides not just the “what”, but the “why”. To steal a phrase from CSMFO legend, David Cain, it’s learning how to tell your story to the community you serve. Developing these skill sets is what ultimately separates the finance technicians from the finance leaders. I get it. We’re numbers people. Most finance professionals would rather spend 10 hours reconciling bank statements than one hour writing an article or
recording a podcast. But as author, Roy T. Bennett, wrote, “it's only after you've stepped outside your comfort zone that you begin to change, grow, and transform.” For those of you in search of that growth and looking for a way to both hone those
soft skills and become more involved with CSMFO, I can’t recommend the Communications Committee highly enough. Don’t have time for a full commitment? Reach out to 2026 Chair, Heidi Schoeppe, or any committee member to ask about submitting an article
to the CSMFO News. Our members want to hear your story. I’d like to thank all of the Communications Committee leaders past and present that supported me throughout my committee leadership, including Will Fuentes, Heidi Schoeppe, Wing-See Fox, Erika Gomez, James Russell-Field, Karla Romero, Joan Michaels Aguilar, and Drew Corbett, as well as all of the other committee members that served over the past four years. Special thanks to Margaret Moggia for her unwavering support of our group, to Katie Floyd from Impact for keeping on top of our constant flow of news articles, and to Rich Lee for giving me the opportunity to really stretch my skills with the CSMFO Podcast. This is not a goodbye - I’m a Communications Committee lifer, and I can’t wait to see what this group does in the future as we continue to represent the many voices of our members and tell the stories of CSMFO.
Jennifer Becker has been with the City of Burbank for over two decades and was appointed Financial Services Director in 2021. She currently serves as Chair of the Communications Committee and Vice Chair of the San Gabriel V
alley CSMFO Chapter. Jennifer earned a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology and a Master of Public Administration from the University of Southern California. She is an avid Trojan football fan, and on non-football weekends you can find her skiing in Mammoth or hiking around Southern California with her husband and daughter.
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