Staff Spotlight - Alison Valentino

May 31, 2023

Although Alison Valentino recently joined central Finance in March of 2023, she is no rookie at Yale. A Connecticut native currently residing in North Haven, Alison began her career at Yale 26 years ago. Since then, she has been part of various positions, departments, and central offices, spending most of her career at Yale School of Medicine (YSM), most recently in the YSM Controller’s Office. In that role, she served as a leader on the YSM Operating Standards and Internal Controls Committee (OSICC), focusing on YSM-specific Standard Operating Procedures.

Alison is able to leverage that work in her new role as director of Internal Controls, as she supports the OneFinance program—acting as lead or co-lead on various projects. Her initial focus will be concentrated on co-leading the Financial Review Enhancement (FRE) project, which will assess the current state of Yale’s distributed financial processes, with an emphasis on the Financial Review Checklist (FRC). The project aims to create a structure with effective standard operating procedures, reporting, and training to enhance and streamline the way Finance staff work.  

The FRE project is relatively new, having mobilized in the past few months, so, as Alison states, “I am looking forward to digging in deeper on that. Having spent most of my career in departmental business offices, this work is near and dear to my heart. We have made great progress thus far, and I am eager to share some of the project outputs with the broader community in the months ahead.” 

Planning is underway for additional OneFinance projects, and Alison looks forward to participating in other program areas as her role evolves.