Leadership
Meet the FA Solutions leadership team.
Brenda Wright
Chief Operating Officer
Brenda Wright Vice President of Financial Aid Operations Brenda has served in numerous financial aid executive roles at major institutions. Prior to joining FA Solutions, she served as the Chief Operations Officer at University Financial Aid solutions.
Brenda Wright
Brenda also served as the Assistant Vice President of Student Financial Services at Saint Leo University, and the Director of Student Financial Services at the State University of New York at Albany. She has extensive experience overseeing student financial services for an array of students and locations, including traditional undergraduate and graduate students and non-traditional students online and at off-campus locations. Brenda holds a B.S. in Accounting, a B.S. in Economics from Mansfield University (NY), and an MBA in Management from St. John Fisher College (NY). Brenda’s core strengths are in financial aid include compliance, process automation, and leadership.
Brenda’s interests outside of work include training for and running marathons. She is also a foodie at heart, and enjoys both cooking in, and dining out. She loves to vacation including cruising, the beach, and Napa Valley. She absolutely adores animals, and loves pampering her two “kids”, Lexie and Anchor. Lexie is a six pound Havanese with just one eye, and Anchor is a six pound Shih Tzu that was rescued from the streets of Miami. Without question, what she likes most about working at FA Solutions are the people that she has the pleasure of meeting, and ultimately the friendships that form — not only internally at our company, but also with the school partners that we serve.
Bridget McGuire
Vice President of Operations
Bridget brings more than 22 years of financial aid experience to FA Solutions. She has served in several financial aid executive roles at large, growing institutions. She has extensive experience in all aspects of financial aid from audit and compliance, production management, organizational efficiencies, and customer service.
Bridget McGuire
At FA Solutions Bridget’s role involves ensuring accountability through each step of the process to create a seamless financial aid experience for the student and client school at every turn. Bridget holds a B.A in Communications from Elon University and a M.S. in Education Administration from Capella University.
Bridget enjoys socializing with her friends, reading and spending time with her husband and 3 children. What she likes best about working with FA Solutions: “I love the dedication each employee brings to the job and the uniqueness each school brings with the variety of programs, systems and students.”
Pamela Notemyer Rogers
Vice President of Business Development / Senior Consultant
Pam comes to FA Solutions with over 25 years of experience in admissions and student services. In her consulting work for some of our school partners, she focuses on enrollment best practices and supporting schools as they work with students throughout their lifecycle.
Pamela Notemyer Rogers
Pam started her career in higher education at Bay State College in Boston, MA. where she served as a faculty member and advisor and also worked in financial planning and student accounts. She quickly moved throughout the organization to work in all facets of the college – including serving in the role of Vice President and Dean of Admissions. After 14 years, Pam relocated to Charlotte, NC with her growing family to work with Johnson & Wales University and then moved on to The Art Institute of Charlotte. She served in admissions and student service leadership roles at both institutions. Pam then transitioned to a consulting firm where she spent seven years as the Senior Vice President of Client Services working with a variety of schools and universities to assist them in process improvement, staff development and training, as well as serving as a trusted advisor to executive leadership at the schools. Pam earned an A.A.S. in General Studies and a B.S. in Psychology and Women’s Studies at Bay State College in Boston, MA. She also completed graduate coursework at the College in Gender Cultural Studies.
Pam and her husband live in Charlotte, North Carolina with their three children and their beloved pet dog. She enjoys spending time with her family and traveling with them and loves to run marathons and trail races. Pam is active in her community and at her church as well. She has served as a board member at Pine Lake Preparatory School to help write their strategic plan and was instrumental in vetting new leadership at the school. Pam enjoys working with FA Solutions because she knows the team of professionals are the best in the financial aid and student services business. Her ability to really enhance the student and school partners’ experience is what she is most proud of in her consulting work.
Michael Holmes
Director of FA Onboarding and Implementation
Michael brings more than 25 years of financial aid experience to FA Solutions. He has held varying executive roles in both campus and corporate capacities. In his most recent role as Vice President, Financial Aid, Michael led all aspects of Financial Aid including campus operations, centralized awarding and processing, and systems support.
Michael Holmes
He oversaw the Operations, Title IV accounting, SFA compliance, regulatory reporting, FA Technologies, training and support divisions while consistently developing and implementing ongoing business process improvements in support of cross-functional initiatives. At FA Solutions, Michael’s role oversees the onboarding of new clients into FA Solutions and developing process improvements within our various software systems. Michael holds an AS in
Accounting from Blair College, a BS in Business from National American University and an MBA from Regis University. Michael enjoys spending time with friends and family, reading, riding his motorcycle, and finding new series to binge watch. What he likes best about working for FA Solutions is the overall camaraderie and drive everyone has f0r delivering top class service not just to their external clients but their internal counterparts as well.
Trudy Plunkett-Bell
Executive Director of FA Operations
Trudy brings more than 14 years of experience to FA Solutions, including all aspects of federal, state, and institutional financial aid compliance and administration, student services, admissions, enrollment management, document management, research and training, supervision and evaluation, auditing and preparation of audits, and recruitment and retention of students from small private colleges to large private colleges.
Trudy Bell
Her accomplishments include streamlining financial aid and scholarship processing while increasing enrollment and implementing policies and procedures to ensure compliance among all applicable entities. At FA Solutions Trudy provides daily direction and communication to a financial aid processing team to ensure clients receive timely, effective, and knowledgeable services. She also processes financial aid, packages students, reviews documents, communicates with clients, researches regulations, provides training and feedback, and conducts audits and reviews files to ensure accuracy. Trudy holds an A.A. in Business Management from Everest College in Phoenix, Arizona.
Trudy enjoys reading and spending time with family and friends. What she likes best about working with FA Solutions: “I like working for owners that genuinely care about their employees and clients and always want to do the right thing. I also appreciate the teamwork, communication, and cooperation between departments.”
Nydia Willard
Director of Student Experience
Nydia brings more than 15 years of experience in contact center management and client services. She worked at Nelnet supervising agents for loan processing and managed a team of over 150 agents both within a center and remotely.
Nydia Willard
Nydia is a team-builder, dedicated to high level service for her clients and works to customize their solutions. In her prior role as a provider for remote student services, Nydia and her teams would answer student questions for schools ranging in size from 1,000-65,000 working with the Community College market and flagship public 4-year Universities. Nydia takes great pride in providing school partners with exceptional service and helping them solve problems. “I enjoy working together with schools to help them resolve challenges. I can also analyze a school’s business cycle and help them predict what they might need to better serve their students. The school partners that I have worked with become like family and trust me. This means the world to me.”
Nydia enjoys spending time with her family on their farm in Texas and watching her son play football and baseball. What she likes best about working with FA Solutions: “The company’s overall reputation for providing excellent service is what drew me in. The atmosphere of professionalism is remarkable within the team. I love being in a place that demands excellence while still allowing a healthy and positive work environment.”
Lisa Stone
Director of Compliance
Lisa Stone has worked in the proprietary higher education sector for 23 years – which included a 10 year stint working for another major third-party financial aid servicer as a refund analyst and manager of refunds.
Lisa Stone
In the last 10 years Lisa served as a compliance auditor and also as a compliance manager for Corinthian Colleges. At FA Solutions Lisa serves as the Director of Compliance, and in this role functions as an independent and objective body that reviews and evaluates compliance issues/concerns within the organization. Lisa also serves as the liaison between the Department of Education and Independent Auditors. Lisa’s husband is a major in the USAF and will be promoted to LT. Colonel in the coming months. They have three children – including two grown daughters and one son who is ten years old. Lisa enjoys running and hiking. What she likes best about working with FA Solutions: “I love the teamwork mentality. Every team member is brilliant and quick to help each other out when needed. Most of the time, they do not have to be asked to help, they volunteer freely.”
Tiffany Badgero
Director of Human Resources
Tiffany brings over 11 years experience in the Human Resources field, including Employee Relations, Recruitment and Staffing, Training and Employee Development, Benefits Administration and Payroll.
Tiffany Badgero
At FA Solutions Tiffany handles all aspects of human resources and accounts receivable and is also responsible for SAIG Enrollment, and G5 processing. Tiffany holds a B.A. in Human Resource Development from Oakland University in Rochester, Michigan. Tiffany enjoys running, spending time with her family and two dogs, watching Michigan State football, and serving as Treasurer of the PTA at her children’s elementary school. What she likes best about working with FA Solutions: “I appreciate the team atmosphere.”
Robert Wright
Managing Member
A passionate and enthusiastic entrepreneur, Rob has been a successful business owner and financial services professional, providing financial servicing to families, small businesses and educational institutions for nearly three decades. As a Co-Founder, and Managing Member of FA Solutions, Rob is responsible for day to day business operations including contract procurement, vendor relations, and revenue generation.
Frequently Asked Questions
If your questions are not answered here, please contact us.
Answer: You can’t!
Ok, that was our attempt at humor and why not have a little fun?
The truth of the matter is that it’s not as simple as “just signing up”, and you can’t just compare prices of one service over another, since business models can differ significantly. As you know, the world of financial aid is more complicated than ever and we should get to know a bit about each other before engaging. We’ve shared some information about us, and the next step would be to share some information specifically about your institution’s challenges, and of course its goals as it relates to a financial aid partnership. Just as it’s important for a school to be selective about the servicer they chose, we also believe FA Solutions should use care in selecting future school partners that we will support. We want to engage in relationships that are a genuine good fit, and have a great probability for success. Relationships are important to us, and we prefer to have a genuine partnership instead of just a vendor-client engagement. We’ll take a long term, enjoyable relationship over a quick sale any day.
We also understand that it can take a significant amount of time to earn the complete trust of a potential school partner, and only a split second to lose it. For that reason, we believe that once we earn the trust of the school and we’re engaged in a supportive partnership that it’s in our best interest to always attempt to over deliver.
We have a large staff of full-time W2 employees for all of our day-to-day operations, leadership, and consulting. Occasionally when we have some overflow work or a short term or specialized project, we are fortunate to have a great network of highly experienced independent financial aid consultants that provide support to us internally for these special engagements. All of our employees, as well as our independent consultants are covered under our corporate professional liability insurance program, and must adhere to the same culture of service as the rest of our organization.
Answer: FA Solutions can provide staffing for most any interim or long term financial aid position
From our perspective today, there is a severe shortage of qualified financial aid candidates throughout much of the country. We are seeing vacancies at even the most senior levels in financial aid departments. FA Solutions provides interim or long-term staffing in the following levels:
- Financial Aid Director
- Assistant director
- Financial Aid Processor and or verification
- R2T4 calculations
- Reconciliation
- Student support (inbound or outbound emails and or phone correspondence)
Furthermore, as a third-party servicing firm that has fully embraced technology, we are usually able to provide staffing remotely, which saves the college a significant amount of financial resources by not having to charge for travel, lodging, meals, and other miscellaneous expenses normally incurred when interim staffing is required to be done on site at the institution itself.
For schools that do not have their own financial aid system, we typically use our system, Regent Award. This is offered to our servicing clients through a strategic relationship we have with Regent education, a financial aid software as a service (SaaS) solution provider. For these types of schools, the use of this financial aid technology is included in our servicing cost structure. It is a cloud-based system that allows the school to track their student financial aid progress in real time, 24 hours per day, 7 days per week. You’ll be able to view the student awards, as well as, see and upload any missing documents that may be needed for verification.
For our school partners that have their own financial aid system such as Campusvue, Powerfaids, Ellucian Systems, Empower, CAMS, etc., we can process financial aid for the school directly in the school’s financial aid system. This is typically the chosen method because of the ease of onboarding. Since there is no need for complicated data integration to an external system, we are typically able to onboard these types of institutions in a matter of one week or less, since there is much less setup and configuration needed.
These seem to be the two most common complaints we hear about other servicing organizations. Our answer is simple. Our processing turnaround time is typically less than 48 to 72 hours for a normal student file. A challenging verification student will take additional time. It is important that both the school and FA Solutions understand that we have the same goals in mind; efficient and accurate processing of student files. We have to work together to make sure that data and documents are received timely and accurately to ensure efficient processing in a compliant fashion.
We heavily staff each of the schools we serve, even the smallest of Institutions. If one of our staff is out sick or on vacation, we are fully aware that your school still needs to be supported. For that reason, multiple people are trained to support each school partner. It is a costly approach to running a company however, we have found that it provides the absolute best level of service and support to our school partners.
We also offer multiple platforms of communication between the school’s financial aid department and our FA Solutions team. You’ll be able to reach our team via phone, email, and YES, even instant chat for almost immediate communication when needed.
We believe strongly in delivering superior results with excellent service and communication platforms. We’ve invested heavily in a team of top-tier financial aid leaders and yes, we are extremely competitive in our cost structure. We are not, by any means, a discount servicing organization, nor do we want to be viewed as such. We fully believe that you get what you pay for, however everyone deserves the right to be cost-sensitive and receive good value for resources spent.
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