Irella Blackwood
Board Member
Irella manages the Accounting team for Capital Projects and Grants at the SFMTA. Irella provides guidance to maximize cost recovery and ensure transactional consistency with grant requirements. She acts as the fiscal liaison on grant-related audits, including the Single Audit and Agreed-Upon-Procedures. She manages the timely billing of expenditures to federal, state, regional and local grantors to facilitate cash flow to the City and County of San Francisco. Irella develops, recommends and implements intra and inter-department policy changes. Her leadership style incorporates innovation, promotes collaboration and drives results. Irella is adept at managing teams of varied levels of expertise. She has previously been the Chief Auditor for the Office of the Treasurer and Tax Collector and the Head of the Citywide Audit Program in the Office of the Controller. In these roles, she led staff in measuring economy, efficiency, and effectiveness of government resources. She also led staff in assessing business entity compliance with gross receipts, payroll, hotel, parking and other taxes due to the City and County of San Francisco. Under her leadership, a number of projects gained significant press coverage, including the low-income assistance program assessment of San Francisco Public Utilities Commission, the payroll audit of the San Francisco Fire Department, and a financial management review of the San Francisco Arts Commission. Before joining the City and County of San Francisco, Irella worked for PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP (PwC) where she conducted internal control, financial, and IT audits for technology companies in Silicon Valley, such as eBay and Cisco Systems. She has also held a key role in the regulatory department of a Fortune 200 company. She has a B.A. in Economics from the University of California, Berkeley, and an M.B.A in Finance from Holy Names University.
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