Groundworks: CMA Kris Dartnell recently launched an innovative financial management manual and...

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GeoSpatial International, SALASAN Operating Division, is one of many organizations that supports CIDA's efforts around the world. Members of the team have completed projects in Asia, Africa, Eastern Europe, the Middle East, the Caribbean and Canada. Kris Dartnell, CMA, has been a member of that team since 1998, first as CFO and, for the last three years, as a management consultant, travelling the globe, applying her management expertise where it is most critically needed.

Developing accountability

SALASAN specializes in five main areas: legal reform and governance, financial management, mine action, spatial information systems, and the implementation, monitoring and evaluation of international projects. Its consultants are involved in the design and management of large-scale, multi-stakeholder international development projects; results-based management initiatives; and capacity development and institutional strengthening, to name but a few of their activities.

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SALASAN has been recognized for its achievements by various Canadian institutions, including receiving special recognition from the Canadian Awards for International Cooperation for its national socio-economic survey of landmines and unexploded ordinance in Cambodia. The company manages to do this with a staff of 10, plus numerous associates in Canada and overseas. The company maintains field offices in Kathmandu, Nepal, Phnom Penh, Cambodia, and Jakarta, Indonesia. This year, it plans to open another office in Bangkok, Thailand.

Dartnell's specialty is in governance and financial management. And although numbers are often the basis for such work, as every strategic management leader learns to understand, success comes from considering all of the factors that help maintain an effective workforce.

"We are interested in capacity building at a local level," says Dartnell. "For instance, in Nigeria, I developed a financial management handbook and workshops that would help local non-governmental organizations better understand financial management. Of course, it's not just about understanding financial management--we want to see organizational capacity building, to make organizations strong enough to deliver whatever service they are required to deliver. If there isn't a strong enough organizational structure, an organization can't succeed."

Dartnell first developed the ideas for her work in Nigeria while taking her MBA through Royal Roads University in Victoria. The course includes an Organizational Consulting Project component, which involves using the skills you learn in the course work in a real-world setting. The Nigeria project was an ideal place to apply both her CMA skills and her course knowledge. And although Dartnell worked for free on the project, CIDA agreed to help fund the initiative.

Dartnell's work in the southern Nigerian town of Calabar (population, 300,000) helped create financial transparency in organizations that must operate in a culture of corruption and poverty. The country has the largest population in Africa, with over 135 million people. Yet, despite being a large oil producer, more than 60% of its people live in poverty.

She says that, in most cases, the secret to success is capacity building with individuals. "This isn't high-level stuff," Dartnell stresses. "People have to understand financial management, budgets, and how this feeds into the larger organization and affects project management and planning."

The financial management training manual Dartnell created was developed to support work overseas, but she says that non-governmental organizations here in Canada need this sort of training just as much. The company is applying the training practices elsewhere overseas, and Dartnell has seen positive results.

"For large projects that involve legal reform, human rights and gender equality--three issues in which we have a keen interest--results don't come overnight. But in the work I do, I do see results with every person involved," she says.

Dartnell was in Nigeria from August to December 2003, working with five environmental organizations, helping them deliver on projects and improve their project reporting practices. In that short period she found that what the individuals involved could do, what they could deliver, had changed substantially. "They had greater strength and confidence in their roles," she notes. "If an organization is accountable, it is easier for it to attract funding for projects. We have helped them develop that accountability." Dartnell hopes that in 2005 she will be able to help take these groups to a greater level of sophistication--helping them think strategically about their whole organizations.

Accolades

This is a second career for Dartnell. Her previous one involved raising her three children. But once they were a little older, she gradually moved into business--first as an office manager, and then as the proprietor of a business services company. After five years on her own, she gradually built up her experience in accounting, becoming a CMA in 2000. In 2004 she completed her MBA at Royal Roads University. Dartnell was the recipient of the Governor General's Gold Medal for the work she did in Nigeria. The medal is awarded for having presented the most outstanding thesis or graduating project in the years' convocating masters programs. She also received the Royal Roads University Founders' Award in "recognition of having demonstrated the exemplary qualities of leadership, sustainability and personal development."

"I was blown away to receive both of these awards," she says. "It's great to have a career I enjoy so much. Applying management knowledge in such a holistic fashion, looking at an entire organization and everything that is involved in running it, is really very rewarding."

The work also keeps her on the road. In January, she spent a few days checking in with project staff in Cambodia before heading on to Nepal, where she was finishing off a five-year project SALASAN had been managing in that country. Recently, she also spent time in the Caribbean as a financial monitor, making sure the reporting on certain CIDA initiatives was adequate, and that the local project leaders were following all of the necessary project management procedures.

Soon, Dartnell hopes to take what she developed in Nigeria and apply it to initiatives currently underway in Pakistan.

"Watching individuals and grass roots organizations in developing countries become empowered as agents of change within their communities is very exciting. To have been a catalyst in their growth is extremely rewarding. My management skills, acquired through both my CMA and MBA studies, provided me with the foundation for this exciting career."

Robert Colman is editor-in-chief of CMA Management.