The last two years of my time at Ramsey Solutions, I spent as the company’s first CPO. As our growth continued to grow to over 1,000 team members, our board agreed to have a board member lead our human resources team. 

In addition to being responsible for all things HR (talent acquisition, retention, HR/legal matters, etc.), my main responsibilities were to be sure that our long honored core values were at the center of our rapid growth.

I spent eight years as the SEVP of five of our business units that worked with other businesses as their primary customer. 

As SEVP of these five areas at the same time, my responsibilities included leading the Vice Presidents of each BU, to be sure that the BU was growing profitably each year, P&L responsibility for each BU and to ensure the teams were aligned culturally. 

The five business units combined totaled $120 million in revenue and included 350 people. 

The five business units included:

• Endorsed Local Providers: The business unit that I started in 2000, this BU was the referral business for Ramsey Solutions. We partnered with high quality professionals in every city to help connect our fans with investment advisors, real estate agents, health insurance agents, tax professionals and more.
• EntreLeadership: EntreLeadership was born out of our own need to capture our company’s entrepreneurial heartbeat as we grew from a startup to a team of 1,000 team members in multiple buildings on a 70 acre campus. Then we began to guide other small businesses on their journeys. Our primary customers were small business owners who needed leadership guidance as they grew. From hands on coaching for sales, marketing, accounting, hiring & firing, etc. to more strategic coaching on goal setting and vision, to producing the number one business podcast on itunes, this business unit served tens of thousands of small business owners.
• Ramsey Education: Ramsey Education existed to create financial literacy in schools. Our passion was to teach students how to handle money successfully so that they could avoid the pain we saw every day with adults. We produced curriculum for middle school, high school, homeschool and college. The flagship product, Foundations In Personal Finance, was used in one out of every three high schools in the country.
• SmartDollar Financial Wellness: Smartdollar is a digital product that we created for large companies like Aldi and UHAUL to use with their employees. This product took the same financial principles that we used from the beginning and packaged them in a way that corporate America could distribute to hundreds of thousands of employees to help them learn to get out of debt and build wealth.
• Business Boutique: Business Boutique was a business unit that existed to serve women that wanted to start their own businesses. From homemade products and services to larger women led businesses, our personality Christy Wright showed women how to take an idea from being a dream to a reality. Christy inspires women to go for it, to set high goals and to achieve their dreams.    

For ten years I chaired our human resources committee. This is where I really learned how to work with people through difficult circumstances.

The HR committee’s job was to walk with our leaders who had team members who were experiencing circumstances outside the norm. This included underperformance, severe illnesses or family members with severe illnesses, divorce, unacceptable behavior toward others, etc. Occasionally the issues were happy ones like international adoption. 

Our job was to create the playbook on how to follow our hearts, our culture and the law all at the same time when things were messy.

Over time, this committee became known as the place for leaders to go to get help with people issues fast and effectively. 

In 2012, our company had 300 team members and three senior leaders that worked directly with Dave.  When one of them left, we decided to create our first operating board. This was a group of eight leaders, hand selected by Dave. I was honored to become part of the board from the beginning and served on our board throughout the rest of my time at Ramsey Solutions. At this time, I changed roles from being the VP of one business unit to being the EVP of multiple business units.

I joined the startup team of 18 team members in June 2000. My background was in securities and I joined the team to create a referral program where listeners to The Dave Ramsey Show could find someone in their city that Dave recommended personally. Starting from just an idea, I gained tremendous amounts of experience growing this business unit. Dave gave us P&L responsibility and treated us as business owners from the very beginning.  

• Graduate of Middle Tennessee State University (Go Blue Raiders!) with a BBA in Finance.
• Formerly securities registered series 6, 7, 63, & 66 
• Awarded the Dale Carnegie Highest Achievement Award
• Currently serve on my church’s board that is celebrating 125 years as a church.
• Currently serve on my church’s security leadership team where my role is leading the men and women whose job it is to interact with people and deescalate volatile situations with people.