Helen M. Perraglio

Helen M. Perraglio, CPA,

I serve my small community as a Commissioner of our historic Acequia, which dates back over 300 years in traditional water rights distribution and administration, and advocate for those that want to continue historic and ancestral traditions unique to our area. I started out as a Certified Public Accountant doing audits of local government and felt I could do so much more from inside an organization. Instead of issuing findings, I was motivated to solve problems, and have been doing so for more than 16 years. I have a passion to serve, will never sacrifice ethics in overseeing strong internal controls and enjoy helping my team members find their unique strengths. Today, I'm the Chief Financial Officer for Los Alamos County and serve an incredible team made up of diverse and unique talent. 

One of my most significant accomplishments so far has been leading the solicitation, conversion, and implementation of a major enterprise resource planning system for Los Alamos County. With a talented team of people, I helped to build this system and convert the county from its 25-year-old system to the new one. I compared each day to climbing Mt. Everest, but worked with our senior leadership to advocate for a resource plan, change management plan, and training plan and then helped our functional leaders to stay motivated and supported in every way to get the enormous task done. We successfully went live after 4 years from start to finish, and did so on time and attained clean audit opinions with minimal to no findings since! Because of this enormous effort, we were able to transition seamlessly to telework during the pandemic, and led a telework pilot committee and drafted the policy that has now contributed to amazing team success stories in post pandemic work/life.  I have been a key leader in capitalizing on technology and human talent, and by being so positive and heartfelt, I have helped to bring out the best in my team of public servants as well.

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