It is my pleasure to announce that Mr. Mark Womer has been selected to be the next Executive Director, Finance and Administration for Washington University School of Medicine’s Department of Medicine.
As many of you know, Mr. Steve Reynolds, who has ably led the Business Office of the Department of Medicine for 19 years, will be retiring in February 2025. In order to optimize the ongoing success of the Business Office we started recruitment for Steve’s replacement, with an anticipated start date of December 1, 2024, to ensure an overlap for training and succession planning. After a national search we were fortunate to recruit Mark as our next Executive Director.
Mark currently serves as the Director of Business Operations and the Chief Financial Officer of the Department of Medicine. He supervises the finances of the department, approximately $1.3 billion in revenue and expenses, which include patient services, endowments, grants, clinical trials, and over 780 faculty within 20 Divisions. One of Mark’s successes includes optimizing our Oncology drug purchasing program through enhancing drug formularies, switch committees, and contract renegotiations. He has designed and monitored reporting to incentivize clinical and research benchmarks in the Department, using AAMC salary data, MGMA work RVUs, and clinical time and effort. He has also been actively engaged in business operations within the department, supervising financial analysts in multiple divisions.
Prior to becoming the Director of Business Operations Mark served as the Director of Business Analytics and Strategic Decision Support for the School of Medicine from 2014 to 2020. In this role he led the decision support and long-term strategy for the School of Medicine’s Chief Financial Officer and directed University staff members and external consultants. Mark was incredibly successful in this role and represented the Medical School during the selection and installation of the finance and HR components for Workday. He designed the new chart of accounts for the University, served as the School of Medicine lead for facilities and administrative rate calculations, and directed the critical accounting working group for the medical school.
Other previous roles for Mark include Assistant Administrator for Research Operations in the Department of Psychiatry and as a Financial Analyst in the Dean’s Decision Support Team, both at Yale School of Medicine. Mark has a business management certificate from Yale University, a Master of Business Administration from the University of Missouri-St. Louis and obtained his undergraduate degree here at Washington University in St. Louis. We are very fortunate to have recruited Mark into this position and look forward to working closely with him in the future.
We are also incredibly grateful to Mr. Steve Reynolds for his outstanding service to the Department of Medicine in the School of Medicine for 23 years. We will certainly celebrate Steve’s retirement when the time comes.
In the meantime, please join me in welcoming Mark Womer to his new role, beginning December 1, 2024.