Melanie Nelson

Background

About Melanie Nelson

After her first career as a stay-at-home mom, Melanie returned to school and graduated Magna cum Laude with a B.S. in Business Administration in 1995 from California State University, San Marcos. That same year she passed all four parts of the CPA exam. She immediately pursued her MBA(Government Management Focus), completing the degree in Fall of 1996. Her Master’s Thesis project consisted of a feasibility study for the future Government Management Institute. During her studies at Cal State San Marcos, Melanie served as research assistant to Dr. Dale Geiger. This working relationship opened the door to opportunities to apply her knowledge to the area of cost management in government organizations. She was privileged to be a part of the Army’s early Activity Based Costing efforts at Fort Huachuca, which served as the proving grounds for the Cost Management concepts that now comprise Army doctrine for Cost Management. Those early efforts were chronicled in Dr. Geiger’s book "Winning the Cost War" for which Melanie served as editor and marketing assistant. She helped to develop courses in Activity Based Costing, which was delivered at the U.S.Treasury Dept’s Center for Applied Financial Management, and Managerial Cost Analysis, which became the basis for Week 1 of the Army’s Cost Management Certificate Course. Melanie recently retired from Cal State San Marcos where she taught undergraduate courses ranging from Financial and Managerial Accounting, to Accounting for Gov't Organizations, to Cost Management. Now Director of Academic Programs for the recently formed Government Management Institute, Melanie directs course development and serves as a consultant/mentor to government organizations that are focused on becoming more cost effective. Melanie’s long-term goal is to help all government organizations implement cost management and control processes which would enable them to maintain their effectiveness in times of scarce fiscal resources.