Financial Executives of the Year

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And we’re happy to celebrate the region’s best. Congratulations to all the nominees for the Business Examiner’s Financial Executives of the Year awards. Your vision, dedication, and stewardship are greatly appreciated.

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May 13, 2013 | www.BusinessExaminer.com | 2013 Financial Executives of the Year | 3

Chief financial executives are expected to protect and promote the fiscal well-being of their organizations.

And as we emerge from a down economy, their wis-dom and guidance is more critical than ever when setting

strategy for sustainable success.

Key bankers seek to understand, advise, and help com-panies finance growth. And we are most effective when partnering with leaders who learn from where they’ve

been, focus on the future, chart a course, and step firmly on the accelerator while seeking expert advice for navi-

gating roadblocks and detours.

Financial executives and bankers make great partners.

Please join me in congratulating this year’s honorees.

Steve MaxwellPresident

KeyBank South Puget Sound District

FINANCIALEXECUTIVES

OF THE YEAR

Presenting sponsor

Contributing sponsor

CategoriesPrivate Companies

Small (under $5 million annual revenue)

Mid-Size & Large ($5 million and more

annual revenue)

Not-for-Profit Organization

Government Organization

Behind the scenes of every success-ful business or other organization

is a financial executive who helped the company get there. While these

key persons rarely get the proper recognition they deserve, our

Financial Executives of the Year program does just that. From small

nonprofit groups to large private companies throughout the South

Sound, this event is the opportunity to truly salute the significant ways

that key financial executives help to bring success to their organizations and to our communities as a whole.


Private Companies

Small(under $5 million annual revenue)

Hans Stoker

CodeSmart Inc.

CodeSmart’s Hans Stoker, now in his sixth year with the Lacey-based informa-tion systems company, clearly has the re-spect and admiration of the company’s president, Mark Meyer.

“Hans has been instrumental in set-ting up CodeSmart financial systems and reporting,” Meyer said, “continually evolving the systems and reporting as the company grows (and) always antici-pating future needs without over-engi-neering for the need.”

He’s certainly got the respect and admiration of CodeSmart’s CEO,

Chad Stoker — and not just because Hans is Chad’s dear old dad. Hans has helped

build CodeSmart into a company with an

annual gross revenue of $4.7 million.

And building firms is some-thing he knows a lot about; he’s the

former principal of his own company, having founded Puget Sound Systems Group before successfully selling the business to a multi-national firm. All in all, Hans boasts a 30-year career that has spanned everything from software de-velopment to corporate management.

Nowadays, he’s a big part of the CodeSmart team — and someone who Meyer credits in large part for much of the company’s growth over the last six years.

“He is a valued member of the execu-tive team,” said Meyer, “always pushing

forward with strategic thinking, which has allowed for CodeSmart to generate large growth year over year since 2007.

“It is through his financial oversight that, even today, CodeSmart has not needed to use outside financing or long term leverages that most other tech-nology companies resort to fuel their growth.”

As a principal at CodeSmart, his work isn’t restricted to the financial realm, ei-ther. According to the company’s web-site, Hans’ role in the firm also encom-passes project management, application design and software performance test-ing.

As if that weren’t enough, Hans is very active outside the CodeSmart umbrella as well.

He is an active member and the cur-rent board chairman of the Freedom Foundation. He’s also active in his church, First Baptist Church of Olympia. He’s also on the board of directors of the Olympia ChildCare Center and has served on the board of the Family Support Center for a decade, with four of those years spent as treasurer.

FINANCIALEXECUTIVES

OF THE YEAR

Private CompaniesMid-Size & Large

($5 million and more annual revenue)

Albert Bacon LaborWorks

When the Great Recession hit, Gig Harbor staffing company LaborWorks found itself needing to reevaluate, reprioritize and recon-figure its finances.

Fortunately, the firm had Albert Bacon on the job.

“Al was very instrumental in do-ing a total restructuring of the firm during the economic downturn that we began experiencing in 2008,” said Labor-Works CEO Scott Sabo. “Through branch consolidations, cost cutting, technology improvements, improved training systems, and revamped marketing, LaborWorks is in its strongest financial position in its history. This could not have been achieved without Al’s talents and leadership.”

The 50-year-old Bacon, whose strong re-sume began as a sales representative with Westvaco Paper in 1985, led a variety of initiatives to trim LaborWorks’ costs in 2008 and 2009. The company lowered its branch count from 15 to eight, transferring busi-ness to nearby branches as leases expired. The result was fewer, but larger and more profitable locations for the firm. Bacon also led the effort in renegotiating vendor con-tracts and rental rates.

Sabo also credits Bacon for helping Labor-Works embrace new technology and practic-es to run the business more efficiently.

“All of our computer operations were moved to cloud-based centers, resulting in substantial cost and time savings,” he said. “We developed a training department to better educate and bring up to speed our new full-time hires, resulting in fewer mis-takes and better customer service. ... Work comp policies were strengthened and temp employee screening processes were made more stringent, resulting in fewer injured employees as well as substantially

reducing our premiums to L&I.”

With the worst be-hind it, LaborWorks is now poised to take advantage of the re-bounding economy and, according to

Sabo, is seeing record revenues while doing so.

The company has almost doubled its revenues over a

two-year period, netting $21.8 million in 2012 compared to $12.5

million in 2010.

The firm is now also back to 10 open locations — in large part thanks to Bacon’s efforts.

“Al was able to help us negotiate a sub-stantial increase in our line of credit allow-ing new expansion into Reno and the Or-egon markets,” Sabo said.

Outside of LaborWorks, Bacon acts as chairman of the board for the Emergency Food Network and a member of the Ameri-can Staffing Association Industry Section Council, and, on a personal note, is hoping to reach Mount Rainier’s summit with his son in the fall.

FINANCIALEXECUTIVES

OF THE YEAR



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Not-for-ProfitOrganization

Molly Archer

Associated Ministries of Tacoma/Pierce

County

Associated Ministries of Tacoma/Pierce County’s nonprofit work is broad and far-reaching: The group provides a spectrum of more than 25 programs and services to improve the lives of peo-ple living on the margins of the region’s society, from serving as a central point of contact for homeless residents of the county to distributing government funding to other community organiza-tions.

It stands to reason, then, that the to-do list for Molly Archer, the nonprofit’s director of finance, is equally as lengthy and diverse.

“Molly came to an organization whose financial office was struggling to keep up with GAAP, FASB, and other accounting procedures, while also tran-sitioning to include finance, HR, and facilities,” said Chris Morton, Associat-ed Ministries’ executive director, upon nominating Archer for the award.

Put that way, it seems like a daunting challenge. Archer, however, was more than up to the task, Morton said.

“With Molly’s dedication and knowl-edge,” according to Morton, “she has

helped the o rg a n i z a t i o n transition to ac-crual account-ing; (use) em-ployee time cards, and then fully automate the time cards so that (they are) inte-grated with the new accounting software; transition to QuickBooks for Nonprofits; complete a salary survey; develop job categories with equitable pay ranges; develop a bud-geting process that engages all cost center managers in proposing and editing respective cost center bud-gets; (and) reduce costs by more than $50,000 in 2012 during a very difficult year for Associated Ministries.”

Under Archer’s guidance, Morton continued, the group significantly in-creased indirect program fees from $100,000 in 2009 to nearly $400,000 in 2013, and managed its $650,000 build-ing renovation project in 2013 so that it came in under cost by more than $20,000.

Archer has years of experience be-hind her to aid in deftly navigating the waters of nonprofit accounting. Prior to joining Associated Ministries, she spent four years as financial manager and CFO of Common Ground, a nonprofit hous-ing developer in Seattle, and seven years as business manager and CFO of Holden Village, an ecumenical retreat center in the Cascades.

Archer is also actively engaged in the community, as well. She actively serves on the boards of the Pierce County Af-fordable Housing Consortium, Tacoma Food Co-Op, and the Greenwald Guild.

FINANCIALEXECUTIVES

OF THE YEAR



Government Organization

Silvia Barajas

Tacoma Community College

The landscape of the last few years has not been particularly kind to educational institutions, and Taco-ma Community College hasn’t been immune to the uncertainty.

“Over the last five years, the Col-lege has experienced drastic budget reductions requiring changes in pro-gramming, staffing, and operations,” said TCC President Pamela Transue. “This took place at a time of record stu-dent demand.”

Fortunately for the school, a steady hand was there to guide the school’s fi-nances, in the form of Vice President for Administrative Services Silvia Barajas.

Barajas boasts a long record of ser-vice to education, starting as a financial aid administrative analyst and admis-sion records assistant with the Univer-sity of California-Irvine in October of 1983. She continued to hone her craft at Golden State schools like the Cali-fornia State University in Long Beach, Sonoma State University, and Santa Ana College, before she headed north to join the University of Washington as

director of finance and administration in August 2004.

In October 2009, she became part of the team at Tacoma Community Col-lege, and the school has been the ben-eficiary of her talents ever since. Barajas oversees a management team of seven, as well as staff members in the book-store, early learning center, corporate education, financial services, food ser-vices, human resources, maintenance grounds and capital projects. She is the school’s chief negotiator for faculty contracts, she chairs the college budget

committee, and she serves on

the College Foun-dation Finance Committee.

Through all of Barajas’ myriad

duties, according to Transue, she has helped

keep Tacoma Communi-ty College headed in the

right direction.

“By managing resources conserva-tively, building a strong reserve, and using our reserves to buy time to make meaningful and judicious reductions, we weathered the difficulties very well, tending to core programs and refusing to sacrifice quality. Silvia was a leader in this effort,” she said.

Outside of the college, Barajas gives her time to several organizations. She is on the board of United Way of Pierce County, and is active in the Business Of-ficers Commission. She also serves as a resource to several Hispanic organiza-tions in the community.

FINANCIALEXECUTIVES

OF THE YEAR



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2013 Finalists:

Molly Archer Director of Finance Associated Ministries

of Tacoma/Pierce County

Mike Doidge Director of Finance

& OperationsCharles Wright Academy

David T. Grimm Chief Financial Officer

Grimm Collections

Bob Goldberg Chief Financial Officer

Gordon Trucking Inc.

Hans Stoker Chief Financial Officer/Director

CodeSmart Inc.

Steve Gray Secretary-Treasurer

Gray Lumber

Steve Zaitz Chief Financial Officer

Associated Petroleum Products Inc.

Albert Bacon Chief Financial Officer

LaborWorks

Silvia Barajas Vice President for

Administrative Services Tacoma Community College

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Congratulations to the 2013 Financial Executives of the Year!

call Steve Maxwell President, South Puget Sound District 253-305-7585

Financial Executives of the Year

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