Mark D. Apodaca
Director of Business and Finance
Education
AA. in Accounting,
Golden West College, 1975
B.S. in Business Administration,
Pepperdine University, 1978
Master of Business Administration,
Pepperdine University, 1983
Professional Designation in Government
Contract Management
University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA), 1990
Mark D. Apodaca is the founder of FINLION, Inc., a business, financial, and management consulting firm which he founded in 1978. The firm offers services in the following areas: personal financial planning, financial solutions, organizational management and structure, and business strategic planning and management. The firm also offers personal and business/management workshops. Information on FINLION can be found at www.finlion.com.
Mr. Apodaca lost his hearing in 1960 from meningitis just before he turned 6 years old . To continue with his education, his parents moved the family from Santa Monica, California to Torrance, California so he could attend schools in nearby Lawndale, which had programs for deaf and hard of hearing students. During his high school years at Lawndale High School, he lettered in football and track and during his senior year, he received the Byron Knott Most Outstanding Senior Award as a member of the varsity football team and while a member of the track team as a shot-putter, he ranked fourth in the Pioneer League. He graduated in the top 20 of his class of 1972.
Upon graduating from high school, Mr. Apodaca enrolled in Golden West College majoring in accounting. It was at GWC where he first experienced the use of American Sign Language interpreters and learned the language. In 1975, he graduated with an Associate in Arts degree, maintaining a 3.4 grade point average, was on the Dean's List three times and won two scholarships including the Southern California Edison Career Scholarship. After GWC, Mr. Apodaca transferred to California State University, Northridge (CSUN), but always wanted to attend Pepperdine University in Malibu, California when the campus first opened in 1972. After 3 semesters and one summer at CSUN, he decided to transfer to Pepperdine in January 1977 and earn his Bachelor of Science degree in Business Administration in August 1978. During his years at GWC, CSUN, and Pepperdine, he received support from the Vocational Rehabilitation (VR). However, because the VR would only support students attending CSUN, Mark covered a majority of his tuition at Pepperdine through student loans and scholarships.
During his last semester at Pepperdine, Mr. Apodaca was hired at Hughes Aircraft Company (HAC) as an accounting assistant, an entry level position. While employed for the next 16 years with the company, he would be promoted six times and hold management positions during his last 11 years. From 1987 to 1993, he served as Head of Finance responsible for three sections, three supervisors, and 25 employees. A strong believer in performance and cost improvements, Mr. Apodaca was awarded the HAC Superior Performance Award and Group Achievement Award for implementing financial systems which would save the company at least $500,000 a year. It was during is years as a manager when he helped the company install TTY's in several buildings and hire a full-time interpreter for deaf and hard of hearing employees. He would leave HAC in 1993 to join the staff of the Greater Los Angeles Council on Deafness.
Because of the importance of a continuing education and to keep up with the business and finance environment, Mr. Apodaca would attend Pepperdine again and earn his Master of Business Administration degree in 1983. In addition, Mr. Apodaca would receive a Professional Designation in Government Contract Management from UCLA in 1990. He also attended classes between the years.
From 1990 to 1993, Mr. Apodaca taught accounting and finance classes at the UCLA University Extension Program where during the last two years, each class would average 80 to 90 students. A majority of the students were professionals such as investment consultants, brokers, medical doctors, vice presidents, and a number of foreign students from Asia, Europe, and the Middle East. He also took nonprofit organization related classes during the same period because of serving on the board of directors of the Greater Los Angeles Council on Deafness as its Vice President and later Chairman of the Board, and the California Association of the Deaf. as its Treasurer.
Mr.
Apodaca was a member of the Greater Los
Angeles Council on Deafness (GLAD) staff serving as its Director of Finance from 1993 to 1998 and
Chief Executive Officer from 1998 to 1999. During his tenure as
Director of Finance, he was instrumental in bringing GLAD up to par in
technology, implementing accounting control systems, and was a part of the
management team along with the Chief Executive Officer and Director of
Programmatic Development, in acquiring a 59,000 square foot building which would
later became the Deaf Cultural Center. In addition, he
was appointed
to the Los Angeles County Service Authority for Freeway Emergencies – Metro
Los Angeles Call Box System Commission which was responsible for the
implementation process of call boxes with built-in TTY's throughout Los Angeles County freeways.
After leaving GLAD, Mr. Apodaca joined CSD, the world's largest nonprofit organization which is operated mostly by executives and upper management who are deaf. During his nearly seven years with the nonprofit organization, he held various upper management positions within national programs and finance.
From 1999 to 2001, Mark was the Division Director of CSD of Georgia. The division received a $1.2 million yearly contract from the Georgia Division of Rehabilitation to provide job training, computer training, and independent living skills to deaf, blind, and deaf-blind clients.
In 2001, Mr. Apodaca relocated to Sioux Falls, South Dakota to assume the Assistant Vice President of National Programs position and was responsible for CSD divisions located in Oklahoma, Minnesota, Texas, and Wisconsin. He helped CSD of Oklahoma win a $700,000 three-year grant to provide Domestic Violence Prevention Services in Oklahoma City and Tulsa. In Texas, human services were expanded in San Antonio and Lubbock. CSD of Minnesota also received a $500,000 three-year grant to provide the Domestic Violence Prevention Services in Minneapolis-St. Paul.
The following year, Mark transferred to the Finance Department to become Assistant Vice President of Finance (2002 to 2004). He was instrumental in developing a statistical system for the organization's Video Relay Service (VRS) unit by using the W. Edwards Deming model for which he was trained while an employee at Hughes Aircraft Company. He also implemented CSD's financial forecast system.
Because of CSD-VRS's rapid growth (www.csdvrs.com), Mr. Apodaca was made Regional Director of National Programs and VRS Marketing (2004-2005) responsible for divisions within eight states. During that time frame, CSDVRS was the national leader in the VRS industry and captured market share within several states. He also was responsible for human services in Wisconsin, Maryland, Iowa, and South Dakota.
During his last year at CSD, he returned to Finance to become the Director of Finance - Budgeting, Forecasting, and Financial Analysis/Planning (2005). But because of CSD's rapid growth, he was asked to develop and implement the internal audit unit and became the organization's Director of Internal Audit in July 2005. Then in January 2006, he was appointed Director of Strategic Management which was added on top of his auditing responsibilities..
After seven years at CSD, Mr. Apodaca left the organization in May 2006, to become the Director of Business and Finance of the New Mexico School for the Deaf. He becomes the second deaf individual to hold a "CFO" position within a school for the deaf since the establishment of the first school in Connecticut (American School for the Deaf) in 1817.
Mr. Apodaca has strong beliefs in investing within the community. He has served on a number of boards throughout the years. Mark was appointed to the board of directors of the National Hispanic Council of the Deaf and Hard of Hearing (1992 to 1996), founded the California Latino Council of the Deaf and Hard of Hearing in 1996 and SignSource in 2000. He would become the first Hispano to join the National Association of the Deaf (NAD) Board of Directors where he was elected treasurer for three terms pf six years (the maximum allowed by the bylaws). He also served on the National Advisory Group of National Technical Institute for the Deaf (NTID). NTID is one of the several schools within the Rochester Institute of Technology. During the 2004 NAD Conference in Kansas City, Mr. Apodaca was elected to the NAD Board of Directors again as its Vice President and during his last 11 months as Chair of the Development Committee, his team raised over $150,000. In 2005, he was appointed to the board of directors of the National Council of Hispano Deaf and Hard of Hearing.
After less than one year in New Mexico, Mark helped form the New Mexico Abused Deaf and Hard of Hearing Advocacy Center, Inc., and was elected to the presidency of the New Mexico Association of the Deaf. He is also a member of the New Mexico Commission of the Deaf and Hard of Hearing board of commissioners. In addition, he is the chairman of the budget committee of USA Deaf Sports Federation.
On October 15, 2002, Mr. Apodaca received the 2002 Golden West College Alumni Pillar of Achievement Award. Since the award's founding in 1994, only 57 GWC alumni have received the award. GWC was founded in 1966 and began to provide services for the deaf and hard of hearing in 1970.
Mr. Apodaca is a member of the National Society of Hispanic MBAs (he was a member of the original core group which founded the organization), the Institute of Management Accountants and Institute of Internal Auditors.