Assessing Budgets from Burundi to Haiti: Susan Jones Joins Population Media Center

Every business needs good accounting to succeed, and that becomes more challenging when your organization is split across continents, languages, and currencies. That challenge appealed to Susan Jones, Population Media Center’s (PMC) new Finance Associate, who will contribute to PMC’s overall plan to triple global operations by 2025 to increase the nonprofit’s impact around the world.

“I found the organization’s mission so important and in line with my own personal philosophies,” says Jones. “The job posting stated something along the lines of: ‘make a difference in the world one spreadsheet at a time.’ That was what I was looking for – a job with heart!”

PMC is an international NGO that uses entertainment to address women’s rights and the environment. PMC creates customized local TV and radio shows, hiring local staffs and partner organizations. The design of the entertaining shows is tailored to change individual behaviors and societal norms, such as supporting girls’ education, family planning, and stopping gender-based violence like rape. To date, PMC has broadcast in more than 50 countries. Every active country has a local implementing team and, of course, budgets to responsibly steward the donations of PMC supporters.

“As a one-person department, I was not always able to get process financial information and get it into the hands of our program managers quickly enough to allow for closer to real-time management of project finances,” says Bill Rider, PMC’s Vice President of Finance. “Susan’s primary assignment will be project accounting which will greatly reduce the time between actual project expense activity and meaningful reporting of that activity. This will allow for quicker management intervention where it is needed.”

Jones joined the team on December 11th and immediately began to review and learn about in-country financial reporting and tracking to make sure the numbers all line up across oceans and currencies.

“I look forward to working closely with Bill [Rider] in creating efficiencies in the Finance department that will support the growth projected by PMC,” says Jones. “I would love to see PMC’s messages touch as many areas of the world as possible.”

“As our programs grow in numbers and complexity, another pair of hands will obviously help with meeting the increased workload,” says Rider. “More than that, I am counting on a fresh perspective to help me build new innovations and efficiencies into the Finance function. And from her previous work, Susan brings a “client-focused” perspective that is essential for any Finance operation.”

Jones comes to PMC with an accounting degree from Champlain College and has worked for the past four years in the captive insurance industry. When she’s not looking at spreadsheets and crunching numbers, she can be found inside making soap, yogurt, or cheese or outside exploring bike paths in the summer and cross-country ski and snowshoe trails in the winter.

ABOUT POPULATION MEDIA CENTER (PMC):

Population Media Center is a nonprofit leader in entertainment-education, dedicated to women’s rights and empowerment, population stabilization, and the environment. For the past two decades, PMC’s entertainment programming has promoted social and cultural change and has helped 500 million people in more than 50 countries. www.populationmedia.org