Profile: Monica Gonzalez Figueroa
Monica Gonzalez Figueroa is a staff accountant in the Controller’s Office in Financial Affairs. Many know her as the cashier who accepts payments every Tuesday from 10:00 am to 12:00 pm. During her shift, she receives payments from a number of departments, including Business Services, Institutional Advancement, Office of the Arts, Ploughshares, and WERS. The payments, in the form of checks or cash, are from a variety of sources, including ticket and concession sales and donations. She also sometimes receives checks or cash for tuition payments.
Another of her main responsibilities is to help ensure that the College has accurate financial records. She and her team use Workday to monitor the College’s records. She does reconciliations weekly, and sometimes daily, by comparing reports from the College’s bank with Workday reports.
The Controller’s Office uses the Zendesk ticketing system to keep track of requests that it receives from other departments, which range from changing cost centers to notifications of incoming payments. Figueroa is sometimes assigned tickets, but she also completes general tickets on her own.
Not surprisingly, Figueroa and her team are very busy at the end of the fiscal year. Every department’s budget needs to be reconciled. Some of the main ways that budgets are reconciled are through payment of outstanding invoices and changing cost centers for purchases.
Figueroa has been at Emerson for almost two and a half years. She previously worked at the Rhode Island School of Design, where she interned during undergrad. She received a bachelor’s and master’s in accounting from Rhode Island College.
Her favorite thing about working at Emerson is the great team that she works with. She also enjoys the variety of tasks on her plate, claiming “there’s never a dull moment.”
Figueroa was born and raised near Providence, Rhode Island, and still lives there with her mother and two brothers. One of her favorite hobbies is walking around her neighborhood park, which she’s been going to since she was young. She has a lot of fond memories of celebrating birthdays and holidays at cookouts in the park.
She also enjoys trying out new crafts at her local library, which offers workshops on everything from paint pouring and ornament decorating to making heating pads and bird feeders. In the summertime, her favorite activity is visiting the Boulevard in Providence to check out the food trucks, farmers’ market, and artisans’ work.
Nancy Howell (Communications and Marketing)