UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Mary Lou Ortiz, associate vice president for budget and university budget officer, will conclude her Penn State tenure on June 3 to begin an appointment as chief financial officer and vice chancellor at the University of California, Irvine.
“We are very appreciative of Mary Lou’s contributions to the University’s success over the past four-plus years,” said Sara Thorndike, Penn State senior vice president for Finance and Business/treasurer. “Thanks to Mary Lou’s leadership we’ve modernized our budgeting processes and financial systems, and navigated the financial challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic.”
Ortiz began her role as university budget officer in October 2017 and was promoted to associate vice president for budget in June 2021. She oversees the University Budget Office, which is responsible for developing, implementing and controlling Penn State’s budget. Ortiz also works closely with the Office of Government and Community Relations on the University’s state appropriation and is instrumental in working with senior leadership on budget and tuition modeling to help keep a Penn State education accessible and affordable for students.
Through her work as chair of Penn State’s Strategic Budget Task Force, Ortiz has helped to usher Penn State into a new era of budget management. She has played a central role in the modernization of Penn State’s budgeting process to more consistently, efficiently and transparently manage resources and better meet strategic priorities, highlighted by the shift to a five-year budgeting cycle. She also served as co-lead on the implementation project for the System for Integrated Management, Budget and Accounting (SIMBA), Penn State’s new enterprise financial system, which allows for improved financial tracking, reporting and forecasting.
Throughout the pandemic, Ortiz and her team have worked to provide University leadership with data and options regarding revenue impacts, tuition scenarios and enrollment projections. Her focus on annual and long-term planning has resulted in enhancements to the Budget Office’s systems to allow for more sophisticated forecasting models and projections to help the University prepare for a variety of circumstances and scenarios.
“It has been an enormous privilege to work at Penn State for the past four and a half years,” Ortiz said. “I have had the pleasure of collaborating with stakeholders from across the University on not only budgeting but also strategic planning efforts. In particular, I am proud of the progress we have made as an institution in multiyear resource planning and in the SIMBA implementation. My time at Penn State has prepared me well for my new role at the University of California, Irvine.”
Ortiz also has served on numerous University-wide committees, including One Penn State 2025, the Tuition Task Force, the Compensation Modernization Initiative, the Financial Resources Enhancement Initiative, the Research Optimization Initiative, and strategic planning oversight and organizational excellence committees.
Before coming to Penn State, Ortiz was vice chancellor for finance and administration at Rutgers University, New Brunswick, and she previously held financial leadership positions at both Princeton and Columbia universities. She earned master of business administration, master of public administration, and bachelor of arts degrees, all from Columbia University, and she is currently pursuing a doctorate in higher education from Penn State’s College of Education.
Additional details about the leadership transition for the University Budget Office will be shared in the near future.