Sheila Briesch, CPFO

She has worked for the City of Edmond for 25 years. She started at Arcadia Lake and created a new revenue source-StoryBook Forest (a Halloween walk through the forest with picture book prop/candy).  She then moved into the Finance Department where she created the City's first PAFR and recreated the budget book and received the award for both, earning the City's first Triple Crown from GFOA.  She has been on the WPFN Mentorship Committee for years and is currently the Co-Chair. She and a co-worker worked back in 2019 with the local university to start a GFOA chapter for students, it was all set to launch and COVID hit, and all programs were stopped.  Later, due to budget constraints in the City, she created an internship program for the Finance dept and was successful with bringing in an accounting student who was then later hired on with the City. She was interviewed by GFOA on successful internships for the GFR. Now the City is launching a new internship to reach out to the Edmond Public High Schools and partnered with them to create a program in the school, to allow for students to visit the city and learn all the different departments and what we do at all levels. She will be a co-speaker at the 2026 GFOA Conference.  In 2025, she was chosen to be on the Auditing, Accounting and Financial Reporting Committee of GFOA and has just recently been nominated to sit on the Executive Board of GFOA.  Sheila also earned her CPFO from GFOA in 2025.