Today, we are spotlighting the Vice President of Finance, Amanda Sakaguchi. As Vice President of Finance at Commonwealth Corporation, Amanda Sakaguchi helps ensure our organization’s resources are managed effectively in support of our workforce development mission. With experience across state government, policy, and finance, Amanda brings a thoughtful, analytical approach to solving problems, improving processes, and helping CommCorp move funding efficiently to programs and grantees across Massachusetts.
Q: Can you tell us about your role as Vice President of Finance and what your day-to-day work involves?
A: I oversee varied functions across the organization that all have differing “busy” times of the year. Currently our focus is our financial statement audit and the FY27 budget. Late fall and late spring tend to be big policy times where we look at unit policies as well as policies that impact the whole organization and see if there needs to be any updates.
My day-to-day is usually a mixture of meetings (either internal or with Executive agencies), directing work across the unit, being a thought partner on a sticky issue, or completing work myself. I have some weeks where my calendar is 90% meetings, and other weeks where I only have about 25% meetings.
Q: What drew you to finance and nonprofit/public sector financial leadership?
A: When I was in high school, I loved the TV show The West Wing. I never wanted to be a politician, but I loved how the people around them researched issues, got varied viewpoints, and made the best recommendation they could at the time with the knowledge they had. There is a bit of solving a puzzle element that fascinates me and motivates me to keep learning. That show really motivated me to want to help people, but never really knew how I could use my skillset to do so. The only thing that I could think of was to go into some kind of analyst type of work.
I’ve also had a series of events throughout my educational life that pushed me away from Political Science and towards Economics: adding an Economics undergraduate degree to stay in school for four years; attending Northeastern University for Economics instead of George Washington University for International Affairs due to scholarship size. I’m glad that I’ve been pushed this way because I think it suits me better, but I also think this is a bit of a chicken or the egg thing going on: do I like numbers because that’s what I’m good at or am I good at numbers because that what I like. It’s probably a mixture of both.
I’ve spent most of my career in state government across various departments doing different functions. I started in education policy as a budget analyst for the Senate Committee on Ways and Means, moved on to MassHealth as a caseload analyst (fancy way of saying that I tracked enrollment trends), then was at the Department of Early Education and Care. I had great mentors there who allowed me to grow in the finance department and have rooted for me in every iteration of my career. Funny enough, they were my counterparts when I was at the Ways and Means Committee.
Q: How does the Finance team help support Commonwealth Corporation's mission and programs across Massachusetts?
A: Like CommCorp CEO Molly Jacobson always says, we are a workforce development organization that moves money to execute on our mission. And if we can help alleviate some of the friction in moving money to grantees, I feel like we are helping the organization. I am also mindful that we are using hard-earned taxpayer money to fund these efforts, and we want it to be used as efficiently and effectively as possible so we can help the most amount of people.
Q: What is one project or accomplishment at Commcorp that you are especially proud of?
A: I am so, so proud that we have a new EFT form for vendors to use. This was about a year and a half in the making and involved many people on our team. We worked with the Executive Office of Labor and Workforce Development to get new language approved; worked with Innovation Director Jo Romero on a form in FormTitan to get the information; Grants and Contracts Associate Director Eilish O’Brien updated Salesforce templates to change the popups; Contracts and Grants Analyst Kevin Dong worked with Senior Operational Systems Manager CJ Bones and IT Director Andre Channer to get the PDF moved from a OneDrive folder to a SharePoint folder; and we updated NetSuite to have secondary approval on any banking updates. It was a total team win and will help us move away from physical checks for vendor payments. And yes, we still issue paper checks, anywhere between 40-60 every two weeks.
Q: Fall is right around the corner. What are your favorite fall activities outside of work?
A: I really like being outside but summer is way too hot for me so fall is my time to shine. My family and I go on daily walks/scooter rides after dinner and usually run into a neighbor or two. This is also a time when I work either in the front or backyard and put new plants in before it gets too cold. I’m currently working on pulling out overgrown scrubs and vines along a rock wall and putting in hydrangeas. I am not an everyday gardener/green thumb, I’m more of a love her, leave her type of girl. Perennials only go into my yard. Plus, I don’t have to be married to my choices. In a few years if I don’t like how it looks, I can always change it up.