Charles Hardie, MBA, CPA, has been named Chief Financial Officer of WISE & Healthy Aging. The announcement was made Monday by Grace Cheng Braun, WISE & Healthy Aging’s President and CEO.
“Charles brings with him a wealth of highly specialized experience and expertise in the private and nonprofit sectors,” said Cheng Braun. “Beyond that, he has a deep commitment to finding and implementing ever better ways of providing services to seniors. In addition to considerable professional skills is his passion for meeting the needs of seniors. At a time when WISE & Healthy Aging, along with other nonprofit service organizations, is facing financial struggles due to reduced funding, Charles will be an integral part of our team as we identify first challenges and then solutions.”
The most readily apparent of those “challenges,” is the current economic situation. As the worldwide financial situation intensifies, charitable donations have taken a steep nosedive, and nonprofit organizations like WISE & Healthy Aging are being forced to find additional funding sources or cut services – sometimes both. Hardie is determined to avoid the latter by focusing on the former.
“There’s a tremendous need for the services provided by WISE & Healthy Aging, and those needs will only continue to grow,” says Hardie, “but the reality in 2009 is that there are shrinking financial resources. So we do two things:
1. We look at ways of leveraging our existing resources – both financial and human. We bring to bear all of our business savvy to improve liquidity; we assess our existing contracts and we become more creative, identifying better ways of maximizing delivery of services while improving cash flow.
2. Beyond that, we’ll be taking a very close look at our available human resources – many of which may have been untapped to date. Toward this end, the agency will be working to identify staff members, volunteers, donors and others who may have unique skills or technical know-how that can help offset reduced charitable donations.
“My goal is to help maintain a good service base by identifying challenges as they arise and moving quickly to develop solutions,” says Hardie. “Change is rarely comfortable for anyone, but it can be a good thing. In 2009, we’re definitely looking at change – a new administration for our country, unprecedented economic challenges, and an aging population that will increasingly need the services WISE & Healthy Aging provides. I prefer to see these changes as opportunities and am looking forward to helping navigate them – to becoming a catalyst for improving the quality of life for seniors on the Westside now and in the future.”
Hardie brings with him an array of experience in the private and nonprofit sectors. Prior to joining WISE & Healthy Aging, he served as Director of Finance and CFO of St. John’s Well Child and Family Center in Los Angeles and as a Management Consultant for Robert Half International. In addition, he was the Finance Officer for the Los Angeles Housing Authority and Controller for California Psychological Health Plan. He holds an MBA from California State University and is a Certified Public Accountant.
