Business Journal Honors 10 Local CFO and HR Professionals

The San Fernando Business Journal on Wednesday gave awards to 10 standout local chief financial officers and human resource professionals.Charles Crumpley, editor and publisher of the Business Journal, said the annual awards are meant to honor executives whose work has become critical to organizations, even though they may not always get the recognition they deserve.At a virtual event Wednesday afternoon, Crumpley named the honorees and gave out the awards along with Chandra Subramaniam, the dean of the David Nazarian College of Business and Economics at California State University – Northridge. The college was the presenting sponsor of the event.At the event, Subramaniam said the jobs of CFOs and HR executives have become more challenging and much broader. He said four in 10 CFOs reported they now spend most of their time with investor relations and other areas outside the historic scope of the job. Going forward, he said, CFOs will need to have great analytic skills and they must be “master communicators” and be able to embrace new technologies – in addition to being tasked with maintaining financial stability.Subramaniam, in answering a question, also said he suspects the Valley are may have fared worse in the pandemic than many other regions. Although economic numbers are not in yet, he pointed out that the pandemic disproportionately hurt small businesses, and 20 percent of Los Angeles area people said they were self-employed, much higher than the 14 percent of Californians and 11 percent of other Americans who reported they were self-employed.The honorees:>Ted Sirotta, the senior vice president and CFO for Henry Mayo Newhall Hospital in Santa Clarita, was given the CFO of the Year award for Nonprofits.>Matthew Getty of Poms & Associates in Woodland Hills was given the CFO of the Year award in the Large Private Company category.>Paul Erickson of Contemporary Services Corp. in Northridge was one of two CFO of the Year honorees in the category of Emerging Private Companies.>Bob Grieder, CFO of Vargo Physical Therapy in Westlake Village, was the other honoree in the Emerging Private Companies category.>Michael Matzner of Illi Commercial Real Estate in Encino was awarded the CFO of the Year in the Emerging Public Company category.>Linda Harris, president of Jorgensen HR in Valencia, won the HR Professional of the Year award in the Emerging Private Company category.>Vicente Jaramillo of Sun Hill Properties in Universal City was named the HR Professional of the Year in the Large Private Company category.>Petra Hatzesberger of Mission Valley Bank was named HR Professional of the Year in the Emerging Public Company category.>Elizabeth Salazar of Antelope Valley Hospital got the HR Professional of the Year honor in the Large Public Company category.>Nayeli Priego, HR director of Golden Hippo in Woodland Hills, was given the award in the Rising Star category. That category honors a person fairly new to the job who has demonstrated great promise.Profiles of the awardees will be published in the upcoming issue of the Business Journal on July 5.