MELISSA VENTURA, MBA

25 years of accounting experience from the ground level up

I started Verity because I kept meeting nonprofit leaders who were spending their evenings buried in spreadsheets instead of doing the work they signed up for. Every hour an executive director spends untangling a grant budget is an hour not spent on the mission. I'd rather they hand me the business stuff and get back to what matters.

I've spent 25 years in accounting, and I started at the very bottom. I've held nearly every seat between that first job and this one. That matters more than it might sound like: when I look at your books, I know exactly where those numbers came from and what it took to produce them. I don't hand a bookkeeper a list of demands. I've done that job.

My MBA covers the strategic side — forecasting, budgeting, the decisions with money attached. My bachelor's in psychology from UNLV has turned out to be just as useful. Most financial problems I encounter at nonprofits aren't math problems. They're translation problems: a board that can't read the statements it's being handed, a funder asking a question nobody wants to answer, a staff that's afraid of the budget. I'm good at making financial information make sense to people who don't think in numbers.

I've called Nevada home for more than 30 years. I'm a mom, an avid reader, and have a soft spot for any animal that crosses my path.