Message from PNA President Tim Williams, July 29

Tankesley gives up the PNA financials

Jeff Tankesley, the PNA’s Chief Financial Officer and Vice President for Finance, recently resigned to take a new job as Financial Control Manager with the Lancaster School District. Jeff's last day at PNA will be Aug. 2.

He assures us that he will not have summers off in his new position with the school district. But given his passion for golf, we actually don’t believe him!

In reality, Jeff is hoping to spend more time with his family and less time on Interstate 283 driving back and forth to Lancaster! Jeff is a native of Lancaster, Pa. and has always lived in the Lancaster area. He and his wife, Danielle, have two sons, the youngest born just this past January.

A graduate of Millersville University and a CPA, Jeff started with the PNA as its Controller in 1999. He was promoted to his current position in November 2001. Jeff has been a strong member of the PNA management team for six years, and has played a key role in all of the successes enjoyed by the PNA, MANSI and the Foundation in those years.

Arguably, Jeff’s biggest accomplishment during his tenure at the PNA was to recruit and train his wonderful staff. No better proof of this is the fact that PNA management has promoted Rhonda Daub, who is currently the Senior Accountant, to the CFO/VP position. In addition, Brad Simpson, the PNA’s Credit and Collections Manager, has been promoted to the accounting department’s number two spot, Manager of Financial Services.

Jeff became CFO/VP in the wake of a tremendous growth at the PNA, particularly for Mid-Atlantic Newspaper Advertising Service Inc. (MANSI), its for-profit subsidiary.

Jeff worked hard and successfully established financial controls that better reflected a more sophisticated and profitable organization. He was also able to bring his significant public and private accounting skills to bear in professionalizing the accounting and finance practices for all three of the PNA corporate entities. He has been essential in creating and maintaining excellent relationships with all of the key financial and trust institutions that service our various accounts, investments and benefits plans.

Most notable among Jeff’s accomplishments were the upgrade of MANSI’s accounting software, the integration of its new, state-of-the art SQL server database into the accounting system and the creation of an ad placement tracking software that is integrated with both the database and the accounting system. He truly brought a passion for technology at a time when it was sorely needed!

Jeff will be missed and we are all sorry to see him go. He has been a stable, reliable, organized and loyal member of the PNA staff. We will miss his humor, his good-natured teasing, his tremendous capacity to solve the toughest problems and his uncanny knack for taking personal days when the weather is perfect for a round of golf!

Most of the staff will not miss his incessant insistence of cost savings, efficiencies and sticking to the budget. Unfortunately, his replacement won’t be a big improvement in that department. She is also pretty tough!

Rhonda Daub, the PNA’s new Chief Financial Officer and Vice-President, Finance, is a graduate of Bloomsburg University. She has worked in PNA/MANSI's accounting department as the Senior Accountant and has been with the organization since July 2002. Rhonda has ten years of accounting and auditing experience in a service industry environment. She is licensed as a CPA and belongs to both the American Institute of Public Accountants (AICPA) and the Pennsylvania Institute (PICPA).

Brad Simpson, our new Manager of Financial Services, started at MANSI as a Print Media Buyer and was promoted to Credit & Collections Manager soon after. A graduate of Penn State with a B.S. in Economics, Brad is pursuing an MBA degree at Penn State. He is a member of the Advertising Media Credit Executives Association.

While Jeff’s departure marks an unwanted change for PNA management, with change comes opportunity. And we are confident that Rhonda and Brad will continue to manage the financial affairs of the PNA, MANSI and the Foundation as successfully as Jeff has over these past six years. Please join us in wishing Jeff all the best in his new job!