Background

Brad West has about 20 years of public financial management experience in both higher education as well as Department of Defense projects. He began his career as a cost estimator and project manager for a private contractor for Department of Defense projects primarily learning the importance of communication and relaying impacts to budget and schedule to external constituencies. He went on to become an Analyst and eventually the Director of Financial Planning at the University of Kentucky. Here he modeled and researched trends at peer institutions for tuition projections, oversaw the operating budgets of roughly 25 administration units, and helped prepare the annual budget document for board approval. This experience guides his passion for using data as a transformative tool in the business operations space in higher education, looking for efficiencies, and helping to frame the story behind the data. He received his B.S. in Mathematical Sciences in 2003 and a Master of Public Financial Management in 2023, both from the University of Kentucky.