Over the years, Vanessa’s expertise has grown to include internal control enhancements, modernizing policies and procedures, as well as software applications management and development. She has a keen ability to create efficiencies, manage cash flow, improve software usage and reporting and manage and evaluate financial opportunities and risks for the organization. Vanessa is a hands-on leader who inspires her teams by motivating, training and providing guidance to ensure the department provides consistent results that exceed expectations. She is adept at ensuring monthly financial systems are maintained with integrity and reliability, and is a valued thought partner to the CEO and management teams for strategic growth initiatives.
Vanessa possesses dual CPAs under US GAAP (Florida) and IFRS (Dominican Republic). She is a member of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) and Financial Executives International (FEI). She also holds dual master’s degrees in Business Administration, and Accounting & Financial Management.
Vanessa also has over 10 years of experience as a college-level professor, teaching and developing curriculum materials for various courses from basic Accounting to External Audit and graduate-level Accounting, at Columbia College, DeVry University, Keiser University and Innova College. Vanessa is very active in the community and has been involved with Vistage of Florida and was a board member of FEI’s Central Florida Chapter (2015 – 2019). She has also served as the financial and accounting expert and board member of a privately-held savings and loans bank (2009 – 2014).
Currently, Vanessa is the CFO at DMS, a half-billion publicly-traded company. Previously, she was CFO of publicly-traded Legacy Education Alliance, Inc, which has had cumulative education revenues in excess of $1 billion over the past decade.