Brandon Coachman

Financial Analysis Associate

When did you start working at MIL?
I started with MIL in April of 2020. 

Describe your career path.
I began my professional career working as an associate in accounts receivable for a staffing agency. I became really efficient at tracking payment discrepancies and rate issues across multiple periods of payment. As a result of unraveling a broad range of misapplied funds and improper rates, I began to notice trends in which SOWs and client systems resulted in the most errors. This led to a shift towards a role more centered on SOW compliance and financial reporting for those same projects I found billing discrepancies in. I moved on to a role doing financial reporting at Johns Hopkins APL for a portfolio of Navy and Air Force programs. However, I joined that team at a time where their new financial system had been implemented. I quickly learned the system and became a subject matter expert for the working group who was responsible to training new users, translating business use cases for developers, and testing new report functions. This combination of delivering meaningful financial data and collaboration with developers was something I found especially appealing. I eventually found a role at MIL that sat right in that sweet spot. Initially joining MIL with a role centered around learning DS financial systems and reporting, I have since become a manager of several teams in the office of Diplomatic Security at DoS.

What is one professional highlight that stands out during your career at MIL and why? What is one project from the past year that you are most proud of and why?
In my role, I am responsible for helping DS users identify which financial reports can be used to respond to taskers and at times this requires pulling data from a number of different places. With that said, there are times where our needs can’t be met by the existing reporting tools. Any time there is an anticipated funding lapse due to Congress, it had been my responsibility to provide the client with a snapshot of funding for the entirety of DS as well as daily spending activity. It became clear that the level of detail required in that request was only going to get more granular. So I contacted the developers of the reporting system to establish the requirements, explain the use case, and test a report that would eventually provide us with all the pertinent information. I’m particularly proud of this endeavor because in previous cases of a lapse, I might have to work 2-4 hours each day of the lapse to run the reports and aggregate the data in a digestible way. The new report I helped design now only required 10 minutes to run and save to a location where our data visualization team can pick it up for dashboarding. On top of that, having seen the data visualization available, now the client is looking for us to provide that level of visibility into their spend even outside of a lapse.

What is one piece of career advice you would give a recent college graduate?
I’d encourage a recent college grad to spend some time really evaluating how well they receive feedback. Starting your professional journey means there are a lot of things you don’t know but this means a lot of opportunities to learn. Being coachable and taking inventory of those moments that trigger defensiveness when you’re getting feedback can make a huge difference. 

What do you love about your current position, and/or overall career at MIL?
The group at DS is such a great team to work with. Contractor or not, everyone is treated as an equal partner in accomplishing the mission. With that said, in my current role, I feel I have the opportunity to contribute to the mission in really, really meaningful way. We identify issues with data and propose fixes for reports that we know are used across the whole department. I know that I’m a trusted resource on the team and it feels great to know they trust me.