Kelly Sparks is campus’s new vice chancellor for finance, CFO

Kelly Sparks, a senior finance leader with a diverse professional background in the private, nonprofit and public sectors, will be UC Berkeley’s new vice chancellor for finance and chief financial officer starting July 1, campus officials announced today (Tuesday, April 29). The UC Regents recently approved the appointment.

Currently the executive vice president of finance and administration and chief business officer at the University of Maine (UMaine), Sparks said she hadn’t been looking for another job, but when a recruiter alerted her via email to the opening at Berkeley, “I knew it was the opportunity of a lifetime.”

It’s also a challenging time, in large part due to threats to higher education from the Trump administration. But Sparks said she will arrive with “the processes, tools and energy to help UC Berkeley faculty, staff and students evaluate, decide and implement financial strategies for growth.”

Berkeley’s values, including equity and inclusion, align with her own, she added.

“This is a very volatile time, but we need to stand behind these values and support each other,” said Sparks. “I’m calm, measured, and while changes will have to happen, I have a very solid underpinning in who Berkeley is as an institution, and as part of that, I can help shepherd it through the storm.”

She said she looks forward to hearing the vision of the chancellor and the executive vice chancellor and provost so that she can help with planning and support, and work through any budget concerns.

“Now, more than ever, we have to be agile, adept and innovative in terms of how we generate, utilize and allocate our financial resources,” said Chancellor Rich Lyons. “I am confident that Kelly has all the skills, values and experience necessary to ensure our university is fully able to meet the opportunities and challenges before us.”

Sparks will replace Daniel Feitelberg, who has been Berkeley’s interim vice chancellor for finance and chief financial officer for the past two years. He took the post after Rosemarie Rae, who held the position until the end of June 2023, left the campus after nine years to work at Loyola Marymount University.

Impactful work in public higher ed

At UMaine, Sparks’ largest effort has been to help turn around a $30 million structural budget gap that she identified upon her arrival in September 2022. She launched a three-year implementation plan with the university’s president and board of trustees that included developing new revenue streams, expense efficiencies, use of reserves and strategic realignment of resources.

“As we approach the third year in this cycle,” said Sparks, “we will close the budget gap and set the university up for fiscal sustainability.”

At Oregon State University-Cascades (OSU-Cascades), which is in Bend, Sparks worked as associate vice president of finance and strategic planning from April 2013 to September 2022. Her most notable accomplishment was leading campus financing for and development of the Bend campus. That campus officially opened in 2016 as Oregon’s first new public university in 50 years after operating out of Central Oregon Community College.

Sparks engaged with community leaders and experts to select and acquire land for the new campus, develop a financing strategy, and design a master plan and long-range development plan. She built a finance and administration team to operate that campus and initiated the creation of a Central Oregon Innovation District.

That innovation district is envisioned to bring people and ideas together to advance research technology commercialization, incubation and economic development. Once completed, it will cover 24 acres and include 800,000 square feet of technology, light-industrial office and retail space, as well as market rate housing.

Sparks also was associate dean of finance and operations at the University of Oregon (UO) School of Law, from April 2011 to April 2013. In her roles at UO, OSU-Cascades and UMaine, she has actively participated in fundraising, advocating for state and federal appropriations and seeking institution-level grants.

Jobs near and far, family and a nonprofit

Raised in Eugene, Oregon, Sparks attended UO and earned undergraduate degrees in marketing and French literature. She attended graduate school at Washington University, in St. Louis, receiving two master’s degrees, in business administration and East Asian studies, in 1999.

Along with a love of math, Sparks was drawn to learning languages in her teens, and her high school and college studies included time in Belgium, Japan and France. She is proficient in both French and Japanese.

She worked for Coach Leatherware in New York for several years early in her career, and the job included time in Japan, where she was a business and merchandise planning analyst who helped manage the brand by developing and overseeing marketing, merchandise and inventory plans.

Sparks went on to work for PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP in San Francisco as a principal consultant for strategy in the consumer products/retail division. She also worked for Nordstrom, based in Seattle, for about eight years, with most of that time spent as a vice president for strategy and planning.

As Sparks neared age 40, she said, she found herself in Seattle, working for Nordstrom as vice president for strategy and planning, as well as “the mother of two who was pregnant with twins. I suddenly had four kids under four, and I was commuting every day from Bainbridge Island to Seattle. I decided to take a step back.”

The twins were born with developmental delays, she said, but she couldn’t find services to give the boys support with issues including speech and weight gain. So in 2009, she co-founded Peacock Family Services, a nonprofit on Bainbridge Island that includes an early childhood development center.

“It was meaningful for me to get up every day and work for kids,” said Sparks.

A fulfilling return to the West Coast

Sparks’ passion for supporting children and their families continued at OSU-Cascades, where two grants she wrote were funded to create the Little Kits Early Learning Center and Career Development Program, now under construction. The funds also will provide tuition, workforce development support and part-time work for OSU students interested in the early childhood field.

At UMaine, Sparks supported efforts by the faculty senate president and child care director advocate for a federal earmark to expand child care services there.

“Being a mom of four kids, with two who had a rough start in life, I feel that it has been important in my career to support other families,” she said.

Sparks’ children are now ages 20, 19 and 17. With the oldest, Ren, graduating from college this spring; another, Hazel, at UMaine; and the twins, Jasper and Gray, heading to college next fall, Kelly Sparks said she and her husband Peter will be empty nesters.

But she added that she’s a “dog mom” to Milo, a miniature Australian shepherd, and Della, a labrador retriever mix, who will join the Sparks once they settle in the East Bay. Kelly Sparks briefly lived in Berkeley when she worked for PricewaterCoopers and was based at its San Francisco office.

“Now, we’ll be able to walk up to campus or a coffee shop or a game or a performance,” she said. “I’m so excited about being able to go to cultural opportunities, both on and off campus. I love theater and dance and libraries and reading and art and sports.”

On campus, Sparks said she’ll be eager to meet with students and faculty and staff members. “So much is happening,” she said, “and I want to learn as quickly as possible how to jump in with planning and support during these turbulent times.”