Director of Finance, Planning and Analysis

Job Description: The Dean of the Faculty (DoF) supports and oversees over 60 academic units (departments, centers, programs, and institutes); houses over 800 faculty, 400 staff, and 1500 graduate students; delivers roughly three-quarters of the undergraduate instruction at Brown; and produces world-class research from the arts, humanities, social sciences, and physical sciences. These activities are supported by a complex annual budget that includes funding from university appropriations, gifts and endowments, and external grants.

Job Description: The Dean of the Faculty (DoF) supports and oversees over 60 academic units (departments, centers, programs, and institutes); houses over 800 faculty, 400 staff, and 1500 graduate students; delivers roughly three-quarters of the undergraduate instruction at Brown; and produces world-class research from the arts, humanities, social sciences, and physical sciences. These activities are supported by a complex annual budget that includes funding from university appropriations, gifts and endowments, and external grants.

The Director of Finance, Planning, and Analysis is primarily responsible for planning, analyzing, and managing the DoF’s budget and financial information. The position provides support for strategic financial planning, decision support, and financial leadership for the deans, ensuring optimal and efficient use of budgetary resources across the DoF’s complex budget portfolio. At the aggregate level, the Director is responsible for understanding all revenue and expense drivers for the DoF to project and create multi-year plans.

The Director will collaborate with the central Finance Division’s Office of Financial Strategy and Planning (OFSP). The Director of Finance in OFSP supports the DoF with the consolidation of financial deliverables, including the annual budget, forecast, year-end close, financial reporting, and input and consolidation of the DoF budget into the central university budget system.

The management of budgets and financial administration of the DoF is highly decentralized, with local department managers budgeting and managing spending from one or more cost centers. The Director will provide leadership and budgetary management for these managers and additional staff with budget responsibilities. The Director provides operational support, training and oversight for department and local cost center managers and ensures individuals responsible for overseeing and managing budgets have the necessary information, resources, and training to understand their budgets to facilitate decision-making.

The Director ensures the DoF and these academic units optimally utilize the university’s financial system to maximize transparency for analysis and planning. The Director will supervise a financial analyst, who will provide day-to-day support for financial operations, transactions, and planning for the departments.

The Director is responsible as the financial lead for projects engaging other operational areas within the DoF and partner units (e.g. Graduate School, School of Professional Studies, Provost’s Office). They will collaborate with the Directors of Research Management and Support, Academic Facilities and Operations, Faculty Personnel, and Human Resources as well as with partner units to develop analyses and projections of future hiring, graduate student support, or other strategic projects.

These projects will involve close collaboration with the Dean, Deputy Dean, and Senior Associate Dean of the Faculty, in addition to department chairs and managers. The Director will be the primary contact for the Division of Finance and participate in the Division of Finance meetings.

Major Responsibilities:

• Budget Leadership and Strategic Decision Support
• Serve as the primary financial advisor to DoF Deans and department chairs.
• Analyze revenue and expense drivers across the $240M DoF budget to develop recommendations and multi-year financial projections to optimize resource allocations.
• Create robust multi-year projections of endowment/gift balances, yields, and expenditures to ensure efficient use of endowment and gift income, in collaboration…