Sylvia Putnam

Sylvia brings 40 years of financial expertise to Spark, having started her career as an Accountant in public accounting, where she performed financial audits for a variety of for-profit and nonprofit organizations. After relocating to the Research Triangle Park area in 1989, Sylvia began working with healthcare staffing companies, serving in Finance Manager and Controller roles. In these positions, she was responsible for the preparation of financial statements, budgets, accounts payable, payroll, accounts receivable, cash flow management, and staff oversight for a $60M business. In 1999, she joined The Woolf Group, a $15M clinical staffing organization providing clinical talent to biopharma, CRO, and medical device companies engaged in testing and developing new products. In this role, she was instrumental in supporting executive management with forecasting and budgeting, as well as designing and implementing general ledger, accounts receivable, and accounts payable systems using new financial software. Following her time at The Woolf Group, Sylvia joined Trio Clinical Research as Chief Financial Officer. There, she played a key role in building a robust finance department and supporting Executive Management and Clinical Operations with financial forecasting, project-to-budget reporting, and monthly financial analysis for the $15M organization. She also played an integral role in expanding the company’s resourcing services to include both a CRO division and a Functional Outsourcing division. Sylvia later joined Catalyst Clinical Research as Chief Financial Officer, where she was responsible for overseeing and implementing the company’s financial systems and processes to achieve its financial goals. Sylvia holds an MBA from the Kenan-Flagler Executive MBA Program at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a BS in Business Administration from the University of Arizona in Tucson, Arizona. In her free time, Sylvia enjoys spending time with her family at the lake and appreciating its peaceful surroundings.