Jennifer has over 27 years of local government experience, including program and budget executive roles. Her experience includes 17 years of direct social work practice, supervision, and program administration across child and adult social work services, five years as a Business Officer for Buncombe County Health and Human Services, and most recently, five years in an executive leadership role as Budget Director for Buncombe County.
Jennifer began her career in social work in CPS investigations and after-hours on-call. While serving as an after-hours on-call social worker and supervisor, the on-call team provided integrated intake and responses to child and adult social work reports. Jennifer served in a supervisory role from 2005-2010 and as Social Work Program Administrator from 2010 -2013. As a social work program administrator, she was integral to developing a quality assurance program for social work practice. She led Buncombe County’s pilot implementation of Project Broadcast to create a trauma-informed child welfare system.
While serving as Business Officer for Buncombe County’s consolidated Health and Human Services, she provided oversight of budget, finance, and contract administration. Jennifer was pivotal in leading the integration and consolidation of Health and Human Services, including overseeing fiscal, operations, and performance management teams. The performance management team worked with programs across HHS to ensure data integrity, performance and achievement of program outcomes, and implementation of case management systems (including child welfare). Jennifer is a subject matter expert in change management in high-level, system-wide initiatives.
Jennifer has in-depth knowledge of cost allocation methodology and funding eligibility for various federal and state child welfare revenue streams. As Budget Director for the County of Buncombe, Jennifer expanded her scope beyond Health and Human Services to focus more broadly on County government operations. Jennifer has extensive experience overseeing budgets that include the complexity of Federal, State, local, and grant revenue streams. She is experienced with grant oversight and technical assistance—both programmatic and financial. Jennifer is earnest about ensuring fiscal and programmatic compliance and maximizing available resources to ensure organizational success. She holds a Bachelor of Science in Psychology and a Master of Business Administration.
