Meet your new president-elect and executive board members.

• Position: News & Numbers - Government Finance Officers Association

GFOA is governed by the 18-member Executive Board, which consists of 15 members-at-large serving staggered three-year terms, the current president, the previous year's president, and the president-elect. At the association's annual business meeting in Milwaukee in June, members voted for a slate of nominees for president-elect and five new members of the GFOA Executive Board. Each of these individuals is profiled below.

PRESIDENT-ELECT CARLA E. SLEDGE

Chief Deputy Financial Officer

Wayne County, Michigan

During her nine years as a member of GFOA, Carla Sledge has served the association in a number of leadership capacities. In addition to her tenure on the Executive Board the last three years, she has served as a member of the Committee on Retirement and Benefits Administration and as an ex-officio member of the Committee on Accounting, Auditing, and Financial Reporting. She is co-chair elect of the Women's Public Finance Network, and has served on the Scholarship Committee and the Special Review Committee for the Certificate of Achievement program. Sledge regularly participates as a moderator and speaker at the annual conference, most recently in New York.

Sledge guided Wayne County to its first Certificate of Achievement for Excellence in Financial Reporting in 1996, and the county has received the award ever since. The immediate past president of the Michigan Finance Officers Association, she was instrumental in establishing the MFOA as a nonprofit organization and in developing its first strategic plan. She sits on the Board of Directors of the Michigan Association of Certified Public Accountants and is a member of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants, Association of Government Accountants, Michigan Women in Finance, and the National Association of Black Accountants. Sledge holds bachelor's and master's degrees from Eastern Michigan University.

Goals:

* Make members the "boss" and provide training that makes a difference in how they accomplish their jobs

* Continue the strategic planning process, clarifying where GFOA should focus its efforts and how it can best serve the membership

* Make GFOA a resource in every state or province in the United States and Canada

* Renew GFOA's purpose for improving the professionalism of finance officers

JOYA C. DE FOOR

City Treasurer

City of Los Angeles, California

Previously the chair of the Black Caucus and a member of the Committee on Governmental Debt Management, Joya De Foor has...