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Viola Miller had only been with the Utah Transit Authority (UTA) for eight months when she spoke with Profile, but in eight months, she’d already set up an entire financial educational program, deemed Finance School, for every single employee at the UTA.
Miller had just come from one of the largest transit organizations in the country at the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority to assume a CFO and treasurer role in Utah. In her earliest days, she got face time with as many leaders as possible to better understand UTA’s brand of business.
“I talked with so many people that I realized there wasn’t a thorough knowledge around how UTA’s finances work and how money moves around the organization.”
Viola Miller
Finance
As Miller got a better feel for what her role would require, she realized that the seven different areas she oversees could provide financial education that would be invaluable for the rest of the organization.
“I talked with so many people that I realized there wasn’t a thorough knowledge around how UTA’s finances work and how money moves around the organization,” Miller says. “The finance organization is a service organization, and we touch every aspect of this business: from payroll on up. This was a chance to help people help themselves.”
UTA is asking its employees to attend two-hour classes that cover issues such as paystubs and how UTA allocates its budgets. Employees have twenty-seven different opportunities to attend Finance School at all nine of its site locations. Custom class times (like a 5:15 a.m. to 7:15 a.m. block) have been made available for late-night bus drivers and other employees who may not work the traditional nine-to-five schedule. Every location has three different classes running concurrently which means each employee can tailor their programming based on their interests and needs.
“We spent January providing introductory presentations and it’s been fantastic so far,” Miller says. “We’ve met people from all over UTA, and it’s a chance to put a face to this role and let them know I’m here for them.”
Fight
How does anyone new on the job assemble an entire financial education program in less than a year? Miller is from Brooklyn, born and bred, and it seems like a New York minute might still be too much time waiting for the CFO.
“I’ve been the primary custodial parent of my kids since they were five and nine,” Miller explains. “They’re twenty-five and twenty-one now, but I really learned how to push myself while still being there every night for dinner with my kids, and that’s a homemade meal they’re sitting down to, mind you.”
Sometimes that meant another five hours of work after her kids went down, but that’s the speed Miller is used to even though she’s traveled over two thousand miles from her home city to take her latest role.
It’s paid off, in more ways than one. “Vi’s demonstrated a unique brand of leadership that is innovative, thoughtful, and analytical. Last year, she saved the Authority millions of dollars through an innovative refinancing,” says Julie Burger, a managing director at Wells Fargo. “Put simply, she is everything you want in a CFO of a major transit system.”
The CFO prides herself on the work ethic that pushed her through gifted programs all over New York City. She also expresses immense gratitude for her mother’s friend, Ms. Bond, who helped source all the educational opportunities the young Miller would benefit from, ultimately graduating as the student president of her exclusive Upper East Side school.
That same relentless drive (and a maybe more than a little stubbornness, the CFO jokes) helped Miller push through a breast cancer diagnosis six years ago, an experience that her daughter perfectly summed up.
“[My daughter] saw how hard I fought, and it made her fight harder in her own life.”
Viola Miller
“My daughter told me she saw how hard I struggled, and while she was struggling with school and the pandemic a few years ago, that’s what helped get her through it,” Miller says. “She saw how hard I fought, and it made her fight harder in her own life.”
Finish
Looking toward the next eight months, Miller says she’s aiming to take her finance organization to the next level. The bane of any CFO, a new enterprise resource planning implementation, is on the table and Miller doesn’t seem the least bit concerned. She’s been through it multiple times before, and the current legacy system needs to go.
“I was just on the phone with our chief of capital services talking about how we’re going to pay for this,” Miller says. “This is all part of turning the ship. It’s not a jet ski; it’s an ocean liner. It’s going to take some time.”
That’s why “finish” is Miller’s word of the year. That means building the flower wall she’s building in her dining room, the altering unreturnable Wayfair table that showed up in the wrong color that she will be sanding and repainting, and doing the endless DIY projects the CFO loves to do around the house.
Hilariously, Miller will also work to finish a current embroidery project that spells out a word that the CFO doesn’t seem to have learned yet.
“It says ‘relax,” Miller says, laughing again. “It’s a reminder. I’ll learn someday.”
Embrace the Chill
Viola Miller’s driven attitude has led her to achieve something most people only dream about: visiting every continent. Antarctica was the last one on her list.
While Miller saw orcas, whales, and penguins up close, sleeping was something else entirely. Her travel guide was frank—the weather wasn’t going to be good no matter what, but if they were determined to sleep on the frozen continent, one particular evening had to be the night.
“I was in a sleeping bag that fit my entire body and I felt like a mummy,” Miller says, laughing. “The wind and ice blew all night and any time the hood of the sleeping bag fell off my head, the freeze got you immediately.”
Sometimes a vacation can be tougher than any day job.
