Hi, I am Adam

I have spent more than nine years in financial operations and grants administration at The Ohio State University. Today I manage over $15M in federal and state grants at the Government Resource Center, running the full lifecycle from proposal and budget through award negotiation, post-award monitoring, and closeout. I work in Uniform Guidance every day, the federal rulebook that governs how grant money can be spent and reported. Before that, I managed a $30M+ annual college budget and served as the interim Chief Administrative Officer, overseeing fiscal, HR, and operations.

I am also a working consultant outside the university. I am currently engaged as a Workday financial consultant on an intercompany billing redesign for a system of more than 30 campuses, the kind of complex, multi-fund accounting problem I enjoy. Along the way I have built Tableau dashboards that leadership actually uses, and I have automated the manual workflows that quietly drain a team's week using tools like Make, Power Automate, and Zapier.

Here is the thing I kept noticing. The same financial discipline that large organizations take for granted is out of reach for the small businesses and nonprofits that need it most. They cannot justify a full-time CFO. They cannot afford a separate grant writer on top of a bookkeeper on top of an operations consultant. So they hire piecemeal, or they do nothing, and the problems compound. I started Up & Adam to bring that discipline down to their scale, and to put the three things they usually buy separately under one roof.

The grants piece is the part I am proudest of, because almost no one else offers it at this level. A lot of people can write a grant narrative. Far fewer can also build a compliant budget, set up fund accounting that survives a funder review, and manage the award after you win it, which is exactly where most organizations get into trouble. I price grant work as a flat fee, never a percentage of the award, because many funders prohibit it and it is a line I will not cross.

I work with for-profit small businesses and nonprofits across Columbus and, because the work is remote-friendly, across the country. Everyone is welcome at the table here. I partner with groups like the Diversity Chamber of Central Ohio and the Women's Small Business Accelerator because good financial help should reach the owners who have too often been underserved by it.