Work Experience
Apart from Jim Albarran's work these past eight years as Chief Deputy Treasurer, Jim has extensive business experience in related fields.
Working with people as a minister. Jim started as a minister mostly for small struggling congregations, which sometimes required Jim to find additional secular work. He served in both paid and unpaid ministry positions over the 30 year period he held his minister's ordination license. He spent many years serving in minority communities.
Working in Information Technologies. In the early days of personal computers before most people owned their own computers, Jim was a computer hobbyist and was hired as a Programmer Analyst where he completed a conversion from a mainframe system to a personal computer network. He maintained the existing COBOL based accounting software while he completed the conversion. He was the lone analyst with authority over both hardware and software. Jim found taxing errors buried in the payroll software which lead to large savings when corrected. This was Jim's introduction to business systems, accounting software and tax considerations.
Self-employed. Jim spent some years working on and off as an accounting and data consultant between church ministry duties or working for temporary agencies. This is where Jim's insight into accounting software and spreadsheet automation helped companies find practical solutions. From here Jim met larger companies seeking assistance.
Working in General Accounting, Tax, and Treasury. Jim worked for a large scrap metal recycler, Sims Metal Management for 14 years. He was retained initially as a consultant to research accounts related to bankruptcy and perform some general accounting. He was then hired to work on Tax Compliance then promoted to Senior Tax Associate to work on corporate taxes with emphasis on state and local taxes. In the Tax Department he managed a major project related to foreign tax credits saving the company millions of dollars. He was later moved to the Treasury Department as a Treasury & Risk Analyst to establish an insurance risk database system and manage daily cash position, electronic funding, wire management and ad-hoc reporting for senior management. Jim left Sims when the company moved its offices out of Chicago.