Bethany Hong

Partner

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I cannot recommend Bethany Hong highly enough – she is highly-skilled, hard-working and good-natured. Bethany really came through in a pinch for us when we were trying to clear some thorny 280G issues in a fast-moving acquisition for a start-up technology client that had never previously even prepared financial statements. Bethany immediately gained the trust of the client and worked directly with him to resolve all the issues prior to closing. We and, more importantly, our client are very grateful to Bethany for the great work she did to help us navigate the tricky 280G landscape in order to successfully conclude the pending acquisition on time. We would welcome the opportunity to work with Bethany again in a heartbeat!

John Fogg, Attorney

Robinson Bradshaw

As a performance driven leader with over 20 years of experience, Ms. Hong has led large cross-functional teams with up to 50 individuals across finance, accounting, human resources and corporate operations.

Ms. Hong began her career at PricewaterhouseCoopers (Big Four public accounting/audit), then later extended her experience to other industries including telecommunications, energy/utilities, health care & clinical research, higher education and nonprofit. Ms. Hong is also a Certified Investments and Derivatives Auditor (inactive) and Lean Six Sigma Master Black Belt (process efficiency/performance trainer).

Ms. Hong’s strengths include crucial skills such as:

Team building & performance management
Financial modeling and reporting
Information technology and systems implementation
Business process design, optimization and documentation
Internal controls development and implementation, including Sarbanes Oxley implementation
Federal award compliance
Human resources including recruitment, compensation, performance appraisals and employee relations

Currently, she is serving as part-time CFO at:

NCB Diesel and Offroad, a full automotive repair shop specializing in Ford and Chevrolet diesel services and all off road applications
J Davis Architects, a collaborative multidisciplinary design firm
Security Lock and Key, Inc, a company offering customized security solutions for both homes and businesses.

Read the wonderful things her clients say about her here: Client Testimonials.

A native of Kentucky, Ms. Hong attended Grove City College in Pennsylvania where she earned a Bachelors of Accounting.

Career Timeline

Joined Rankin McKenzie as Partner in 2023.
From 2021-2023, Ms. Hong was the Director of Accounting and Compliance at Eva Garland Consulting (EGC), listed by Inc. 5000 magazine as one of America’s Fastest Growing Companies for five consecutive years. EGC provides contract grant writing and accounting/grant compliance services. As Head of Accounting and Compliance Services (12 FTEs), she grew revenue by 40%, grew department 30% to serve 150+ businesses while mitigating impact of Covid & subsequent “Great Resignation”.
During 2015-2021, she served as the Director of Finance and Administration at Duke University, Talent Identification Program (TIP), a $35M, 90 employee nonprofit that provided educational opportunities to academically gifted students. Duke TIP enrolled 300,000-400,000 active students per year and 10,000-15,000 students participated in programs annually.
- As Head of Finance and HR (10 FTEs), she had accountability for program budgeting, reporting, donor and endowment funds management, and allocation of financial aid.
- She led the HR team that was responsible for recruitment and onboarding 1,500 seasonal staff annually. Supported implementation/replacement of an obsolete ERP system with Salesforce. Supported COVID driven organization realignment to online programs.
- Prior to TIP, she held a Finance role at Duke University Health System, with accountability for budgeting, reporting and financial modeling for a $1B revenue laboratory organization.
From 2013-2015, Ms. Hong was the Director of Grants Administration at INC Research (now Syneos Health) and Head of Investigator Payment Department (50 FTEs across 6 countries) where she was accountable for client payment tracking for clinical trial contracts. She was responsible for all non-US payments in 50 countries and 25 currencies. She optimized the payment processes and reconciled hundreds of contracts inherited from prior merger with minimal documentation.
From 2009-2013, she served as the Process Excellence Manager / Accounts Payable Manager at ABB, a Fortune 500 Company with 150,000 employees internationally serving the utility industry where she led the US based accounts payable and vendor data management shared services team (20 FTEs) through an 18 month conversion of 25 disparate accounting systems into a single version of SAP. She drafted and implemented Sarbanes Oxley controls for HR Shared Service center and managed a Travel & Expense audit function for 10k employees. Additionally, she optimized recruiting and onboarding processes and supported implementation of internal payroll process/team for ~10k employees.
From 2007-2008, Ms. Hong was the Global Finance Policy Leader and Lean Six Sigma Blackbelt at Nortel Telecommunications where she developed/authored technical accounting briefs and drove process optimization initiatives.
During 2004-2006, she was the Financial Analyst at Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications and supported a full-service IT shop, internal legal & patent management teams and facilities management.
From 2001-2004, she served as the Internal Auditor at Dominion Power (Utilities) and was accountable for power plant audits and commodities trading floor. Ms. Hong received a Certified Investments & Derivatives Auditor certification and Six Sigma Black Belt training which then led her to a Master Black Belt trainer role. She developed a 3-day training curriculum and led classes across the organization that drove efficiency improvement interventions at all levels of the organization. Furthermore, she completed process improvement projects resulting in savings of $50M annually.

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