USA Funds Staff Profile: Playing a ‘Key Role in Supporting Higher Education’

Looking back to her childhood, Kelly Wolfe gets a good idea of where her love of accounting began. One of her favorite toys was her make-believe calculator.

Wolfe still performs calculations on a daily basis, but now it’s in a variety of accounting-related functions as the assistant controller for the nation’s leading education-loan guarantor. She’s worked for USA Funds^® nearly two decades.

In her current position for almost seven years, Wolfe is responsible for tasks ranging from preparing financial statements to gathering information for financial audits. Those many responsibilities are well suited for someone who’s always been a stickler for detail.

“Even back in high school, I knew this was what I wanted to do,” Wolfe says.

Wolfe’s attention to accuracy and passion for streamlining processes help USA Funds’ customers. She works to ensure that USA Funds meets its internal and external financial obligations in a timely manner and keeps accurate records.

She regularly searches for ways to automate procedures, to make USA Funds’ finance division more efficient. Wolfe also is the liaison between USA Funds’ employees and their technological support.

Her work benefits borrowers, schools, lenders, the U.S. Department of Education, and USA Funds employees.

“USA Funds’ mission is in support of higher-education preparation, access and success, and that includes the work of accounting,” she says. “You couldn’t get loans guaranteed without accounting, and you need tracking of data to award scholarships. We play a key role in supporting higher education.”

Wolfe has worked in accounting positions since she received her bachelor’s degree in accounting and finance from Ball State University more than 20 years ago.

After her undergraduate work, she headed for San Diego, where she spent two years working for a company that specialized in heating, ventilating and air conditioning and then as a civilian employee on a naval base.

She returned to her native Indiana in 1988, when she joined USA Funds as an accountant. In addition to her years as accountant, Wolfe spent several years as manager of federal reporting before taking her current job.

Along the way she earned a master’s degree in business administration from the University of Indianapolis. She also has raised two sons who now keep her busy supporting their involvement in the sport of wrestling. Her younger son recently was ranked among the top-five high-school wrestlers in the nation.

When not at work at USA Funds, Wolfe spends time with her husband and as coordinator of fund-raising, concessions and a variety of other activities for her younger son’s wrestling club.