Four and a half years and three promotions made Meredith Roberts the controller of a $1 billion company.
Roberts was a senior financial analyst at Associated Electric Cooperative Inc. for three years before she moved to the position of resource planner, where she stayed a little more than a year before assuming the controller position in November.
Roberts leads a staff of 12 and is responsible for the accounting and budgeting of AECI, which provides electricity to rural electric cooperatives in Missouri and portions of Iowa and Oklahoma, serving more than 850,000 customers.
"I believe the primary reason I have been given this opportunity is that I have demonstrated not only that I do my job with excellence, but because I have demonstrated an ability to lead and motivate others," Roberts says.
A self-described goal setter, Roberts sets high standards and meets them. Although she didn't expect to achieve the position of AECI controller when she did, Roberts did aspire to it.
As a presidential scholar at Missouri State University, where she earned a bachelor's degree in accounting, her cumulative grade point average was 3.95. And Roberts hit a perfect cumulative 4.0 when she earned her master's degree at Drury University while working at AECI.
"In spite of these successes, I don't see my career as one that is necessarily lined with lots of big wins," she says. "I see it as one in which I have consistently had high expectations for myself, worked very hard to meet them and have been rewarded ... with increasing levels of responsibility and exciting and challenging assignments."
Prior to joining AECI, Roberts worked at Ernst & Young LLP and then BKD LLP, where she mentored new employees - a practice she continues because she has benefited from the counsel of her own mentors.
"The group that I manage is made up largely of young professionals," she says.
"I work very hard to help these people in the early stages of their careers learn about themselves (and) what it takes to be successful, and provide them with the knowledge and tools to do so."
Outside of work, Roberts says she is a passionate volunteer for Ozarks Literacy Council.
"It provides an important service to our community, working to eliminate and prevent illiteracy, which is unfortunately quite common and so closely linked to poverty and other negative impacts on the community," she says.
This installment of Springfield Business Journal’s Architects & Engineers Project Report showcases 26 endeavors by area design and engineering professionals.
