Chris Matthews

Financial Analyst
Washington, DC

Chris, can you tell us a little about yourself?

I was born in Atlanta, GA to a military family so I moved around a bit as a kid. I live in the DC area but I consider Boston my second home, and I’m very into all Boston sports. I played lacrosse in college, and I love snowboarding. I started off my career in personnel security and was part of the initial roll-out of the electronic system for applying for a security clearance. Outside of that, I have a background in project management and finance. In my last position as a Budgeting Analyst, I helped customers spend and obligate their money. Now with LCE, I work in Financial Management Risk and Compliance ensuring all spending is in accordance with federal regulations.

What do you do at LCE?

I work for the Internal Review Team assessing Risk and Compliance under the Accounting Branch of the Marine Corps. We’re responsible for implementing Internal Controls Over Financial Reporting (ICOFR) testing throughout the entire Marine Corps. We review business processes and validate USMC balance sheets. We take samples of financial transactions, interview process owners and stakeholders, re-trace their procedural steps and test for compliance and deficiencies.  After testing, we brief the stakeholders on our findings and provide recommendations or Corrective Action Plans (CAPs) if necessary. The work we do acts as a “pre-audit” to help the customer become better prepared for audits while highlighting any potential deficiencies or material weaknesses within the USMC.

I’m also a lead Business Analyst for a new system, the Financial Management Evaluation & Assessment (FMEA) Tool. That role involves a great deal of requirements gathering, project management, implementation and rollout for this tool that is currently in the development stage. I helped lead a 3 day working group with SMEs throughout the USMC reviewing the application and discussing potential system enhancements.

What do you enjoy most about working at LCE?

My day to day work keeps me at the client site, but everyone I’ve interacted with in our DC office has been over the top nice and extremely helpful. We’re bringing in a lot of really great and very talented people to help grow our market share in DC. Donna, our office manager, was incredibly helpful during my onboarding and continues to be so accommodating and helpful whenever I need anything within LCE.  I would absolutely recommend LCE to anyone looking to advance their career.