San Bernardino County Employees' Retirement Association.

• Author: Ludwig, Katie
• Position: FINANCE

In her first two years at the helm of the San Bernardino County Employees' Retirement Association (SBCERA),

Debby Cherney is well on her way to accomplishing many of the goals she set for the organization. Chief among those was establishing a strategic plan for the organization and establishing a more collaborative work environment. Debby credits much of her early success to SBCERA's Fiscal Services leadership team.

Debby was hired as SBCERA's chief executive officer (CEO) in August 2018. SBCERA is a multi-employer pension plan that serves 18 public employers and has roughly 42,000 members and 73 employees.

Debby explained that she was hired specifically to bring about an organizational change because at that time, the organization was hindered by internal distrust and dysfunction. As she described it, "The management team was not getting along well with each other, with the board, or with the staff." Perhaps as a reaction to this, the staff had recently voted to organize.

Debby was up for the challenge. One of her first goals when she arrived was to build a finance team that could work more collaboratively. She has found that in Chief Financial Officer Amy Mclnerny, Accounting Manager Christina Cintron, and Accounting Manager Jayson Eaton.

"These three are all big initiators of things. They're not shy," Debby said.

Ever the team player, Amy chimed in, "We are lucky, though. We have a staff that puts up with us. They are very, very accommodating about our moving and shaking."

ASSEMBLING THE TEAM

So, just how did Debby assemble this team of movers and shakers?

"I really just said, 'look, if were going to do well as an organization, we have to be able to work together. We have to be able to identify and be open about the problems and challenges we see and work together to reach solutions that benefit our members,'" she explained.

One of Debby's first moves was to promote Amy, who started with SBCERA as an accounting manager in 2015. After being promoted to CFO in December 2018, Amy leads the Fiscal Services team, which consists of 17 staff members.

Amy explained how her team performs all the typical duties of a finance department, in addition to providing support to the Member Services team, which is responsible for all of the tasks related to setting up a new retiree's pension payments. She explained, "We do, you know, the normal things like produce CAFRs, and financial statements, and budgets and all sorts of reports. But also, we really support the Member Services team in the organization. We get all the normal fiscal stuff that feeds our accounting nerd soul, and then we get to serve our members.

So it's a really nice balance, and it keeps things really interesting and presents us with new problems to solve all the time."

As CFO, one of Amy's first moves was to promote Christina Cintron to accounting manager. Christina has been with SBCERA since 2014. "I started as a senior accountant with the organization, so I've been lucky enough to see the...