Our department reorganized tremendously! We encompass government relations; Hope Lodges (homes away from home for cancer patients and their families); call centers (Cancer Resource Network); patient navigators; community resources; international, research, constituent relationship management; database management; state grants and contracts; to name a few.

I work approximately 10–12 hours each day and touch on meeting planning, developing coursework for our training department, coaching/counseling three staff, responding to numerous requests for assistance, scheduling appointments, making travel arrangements, working on budget and finance reports, and participating on workgroups/conference calls.

We develop our budgets in June, enter it in our budget database in July, but then our board doesn’t approve the budget till December and the communication is lacking on when it’s approved and if any items are cut.

I stay in contact with our finance department and run many budget reports to ensure accuracy in transaction detail, coding, and reporting. It helps to have a “friend” in the finance department.

I have been employed with the ACS for 24 years. I started as a secretary, was promoted to executive secretary after five years, then five years later moved from our national office to the division office as the assistant corporate secretary to the board. I was in this position for five years when I moved to be the administrative manager for mission, and was recently promoted this past year to my current position of director of mission operations.