Unsung hero. Team player. Courageous. Compassionate. These are some of the words Healy’s co-workers use to describe her.

Healy is Agriculture’s deputy chief financial officer. Yet her response in the face of trials and disasters has earned her additional distinction in a role that executives often find themselves in—crisis managers. Her managerial style also highlights the importance of preparation and communication when the unexpected occurs.

Healy is quick to deflect credit to her colleagues for some of t

Pat Healy

he department’s most herioc efforts.

But by all accounts, she played a pivotal role in USDA’s response during the sweeping disruptions caused by Hurricane Katrina. The focus of the response was the National Finance Center in New Orleans, a unit of the department, which handles payroll operations for thousands of federal employees. While Hurricane Katrina bore down on the city last year, NFC managed to rush out the payroll for more than half a million federal workers on time (Government Leader, March/April 2006, Page 26).

Katrina’s effects on NFC’s employees were devastating. Eighty percent of the employees had total or partial loss of their homes, Healy said. Yet they showed up at the deployment sites near Philadelphia, Grand Prairie, Texas, and other locations and did their jobs. “No one said, ‘I can’t come.’ They understood their responsibilities.” Their response in large measure reflected the effort Healy led in practicing for disaster recovery.

The terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, were a huge wake-up call for many executives in the government, including Healy. She and other department officials studied some of the lessons from that day and began to focus their efforts on disaster planning and continuity-of-operations planning.

“We all obviously had our lives changed by Sept. 11,” said Priscilla Carey, USDA’s director of operations.

Healy used the events of Sept. 11 as an incentive to plan and practice for other possible disaster scenarios. She was tireless in making sure everybody knew what to do, Carey said. “So when Katrina hit, it wasn’t like anybody ran around saying, ‘What are we supposed to do?’” Carey said. “They knew. They knew Pat would be providing the leadership.”

Twice-a-Year Drills. Agriculture had a contract for disaster recovery services with SunGard Data Systems Inc. of Wayne, Pa., near Philadelphia. Healy and her team practiced a disaster recovery drill there every six months, rehearsing different scenarios. “We always knew there was a hurricane threat at the NFC,” so it became part of the center’s culture to practice disaster drills, Healy said.

When Katrina hit, the department was in the middle of its year-end accounting, Healy said. Some of USDA’s financial feeder systems and accounting operations were also located in New Orleans. “We were able to recover our systems and operations, close our books, produce statements, provide auditors with the samples and responses they needed, and meet the Office of Management and Budget’s deadline to provide our Performance and Accountability Report 45 days after year-end close—and all despite Katrina.”

Healy wasn’t really surprised that the department met the payroll and closed its books on time. “I was concerned, of course, but not really worried,” she said. People thought that she and Jerry Lohfink, director of the NFC, were “being a tad optimistic.”

But Healy said she “knew our folks, their capabilities and their determination, and knew we had a plan that worked. And we were right—we made the date with time to spare.”

Defying tremendous pressures, the department converted two new agencies, the Coast Guard and the Transportation Security Administration, which together had more than 60,000 employees, to the NFC payroll system during the same two-week period after Katrina. “As a result, we produced our largest payroll ever from our disaster sites,” Healy said. “I think this says a lot about the character and devotion to mission of our federal workforce.”

A Million Details. After Katrina struck, Healy immediately enlisted the help of Carey and Russ Ashworth, the department’s procurement executive.

There were a million details to take care of. NFC employees traveled to the backup centers in Philadelphia, Grand Prairie, Texas, and six or so other sites, Healy said. “Many of our employees had lost everything,” she said. “I knew our folks were in need in many ways and that their USDA family would need to help them.”

Carey and Ashworth sent administrative and procurement staff to support employees in Washington and the backup sites. The support staff helped with the pressing details, from filling out travel vouchers to finding medical care for the displaced workers. USDA employees also helped NFC staff find reasonably priced apartments that “would allow them to have family and pets, and some semblance of normalcy,” Healy said.

Gil Hawk, CIO of the NFC, respects Healy’s sense of balance between people and mission. “It was never one or the other; it was always both,” he said. “Her philosophy is, ‘Take care of the people and they’ll take care of the job.’ A lot of times people say that, but Pat really does it.”

Hawk was especially impressed with how Healy kept the lines of communication open during and after the hurricane.

“In the early months of Katrina, we had two conference calls a day, since we were dispersed throughout different cities,” Hawk said. All the senior staff members had Healy’s cell phone number. She arranged to send BlackBerry handheld devices to NFC staff so they could communicate more easily with Agriculture. “She not only facilitated communication, but she also gave us the tools,” Hawk said.

Indeed, communication is at the heart of Healy’s leadership style. A language major, she graduated with a bachelor’s degree in German from Ohio State University. She also earned a master’s degree in library and information science from the University of Michigan, and a master’s in business administration from the University of Maryland.

Living and working in Germany for a semester during her college days taught her an appreciation of the cultural context of conversation. She learned to seek ways to break down barriers to communications, such as jargon, and understand the other person’s viewpoint. “Only when that occurs can you really begin to get at the root cause of an issue and work through it,” she said.

Attention to Detail. A former librarian, Healy had no trouble switching from the Dewey Decimal system to financial-management systems. Every day she uses her library science degree, which taught her “how to do basic research of a topic so I don’t reinvent the wheel, and it taught me the power and usefulness of well-organized information that is easily retrievable.”

This attention to detail has served Healy and USDA well in her tenure as deputy CFO. The department received its first-ever clean audit in 2002.

"People may complain about their current system, but once you try to change it, it’s the best system they ever had." —Patricia Healy

“You have to demonstrate you are well-run in financial management,” Healy said. “Otherwise all your other programs will come into question.”

Healy was recruited by USDA in 1998 to lead the effort on implementing an enterprisewide financial-management system. Other than Katrina, Healy said this was the biggest challenge of her career. “Systems implementations are all about change, and they cost money,” she said. “People may complain about their current system, but once you try to change it, it’s the best system they ever had.”

The enterprisewide financial management system “was the fundamental reason we were able to get the clean opinion,” Healy said. Healy also cites a list of USDA colleagues as instrumental in achieving the clean audit: Wendy Snow, associate CFO for financial systems; John Holladay, systems accountant—“he owns much of the clean opinion,” Healy said; former CFO Ted McPherson, who “was invaluable in bringing seasoned talent into USDA who could hit the ground running ... and produce results in short order”; and Forest Service CFO Jesse King.

“A great deal of hard work by many people through USDA over many years ultimately culminated in the clean opinion,” Healy said. “A mantra for all of us was [that] if you take care of the work and the business, the clean opinion will take care of itself.”

A second-generation federal employee, Healy “wasn’t all that interested” in following in her father’s footsteps; he also worked for USDA. But after a stint working for the National Library of Medicine, Healy found herself drawn to its mission of disseminating medical information to health professionals worldwide.

Role Models. Healy also credits her aunt, Agnes Healy, as a role model. Healy’s mother died when Healy was 9 years old, so Aunt Agnes moved in with the family in the New Jersey suburbs and helped raise her. “She was a single, college-educated career woman during a time when that was not the norm,” Healy said. “When my aunt started in business, college-educated women were secretaries. And she was a very good secretary, very proud that she could type 120 words per minute and take shorthand. She ended up being assistant head of the contracts department for MacMillan Publishing Co. in New York.” Late in life, Agnes Healy developed Alzheimer’s but “she never lost her intellect and command of the English language,” Healy said. Aunt Agnes recently died, but “to the end, she counseled and encouraged me. She kept me grounded.”

But don’t misunderstand: Healy is not a flighty sort, jumping from crisis to crisis.

"Pat is very much a team player and makes sure she communicates up and out to her colleagues in other areas." —Wendy Snow, USDA associate CFO

“Whether in disaster or day-to-day work, Pat is very much a team player and makes sure she communicates up and out to her colleagues in other areas,” Snow said.

Snow said that, during the first few weeks after Katrina, she grappled with issues she’s never been confronted with as a federal manager. “I would find myself feeling sorry for myself. Then I would think, ‘What’s wrong with you, Wendy?’ and I would think how Pat was responsible for all of it,” Snow said. “When something like Katrina hits, you’re confronted with 2,000 things. Pat has an uncanny ability to say, ‘These are the three things that are important.’ ”

Healy scoffs at any suggestion that she showed any special courage or heroism after Katrina, Carey said. “Any sense that she’s the hero is crazy to her,” Carey said. “She doesn’t see herself that way. She saw herself just as the admin person.” Healy taught Carey that during something like Katrina, she needed to reach out to a network for help.

“You just can’t go through these things on your own,” Carey said. “It was exhausting, life-and-death work. Some of my employees could have been dead or injured. You can’t get through that on your own. She was the one who kept people on track and focused,” she said. “She was the connecting point.”