Power & Peril: FAMU CFO Rebecca Brown comes under fire

W. Rebecca Brown, the SVP and CFO of FAMU, was on the receiving end of intense scrutiny from the FL Board of Governors earlier this month after audit findings revealed multiple delayed reconciliations, poor internal controls and the continuation of financial issues state auditors flagged dating back to 2022.  

During a meeting the June 18, members of the Florida Board of Governors’ audit and compliance committee expressed their concerns about the university’s finance function and its practices. Multiple board members also questioned Brown’s performance.

“From my perspective, the CFO failed pretty miserably in this job,” said Board of Governors member Aubrey Edge, who chairs the audit committee. “She’s been there two years and five months, which is long enough to know that you’re not reconciling your statements.”

Brown has served, permanently, as CFOs since January 2023  and on an interim basis from July 2021 until June 2022.  Gloria Walker served in the role CFO for nine months from June 2022-January 2023. Brown was appointed to the role both times by former President Larry Robinson,  while Kelvin Lawson served as BOT Chair for the majority of the past decade.

FAMU's operational audit from July 2022 through Dec. 2023 found four major findings: delayed bank reconciliations, missing performance evaluations, and slow vendor payments that violated both university rules and state law. The audit also found discrepancies in how the finance team reported restricted and unrestricted investment income and made note that the college’s internal accounting controls required improvement. This investment discrepancy is a repeat issue that auditors have flagged since 2022.

While Interim President Timothy Beard told the BOG at the meeting that he has confidence in Brown, Edge clearly did not. 

As concerns were being raised about Brown's performance specifically, Board of Governors member Eric Silagy asked Beard if Brown has received any bonuses or any increase in base pay during her time in the CFO role, but Beard did not have that information during the meeting. Rattler Nation has learned that Ms. Brown and several members of her leadership team in the Division of Finance and Administrative Services, have, in fact, received either raises or bonuses with in the past two years.

Sources also confirmed that Michael Smith, Associate Vice President in DFAS, was awarded a bonus despite holding his position for less than a six months—a move that drew internal criticism.   

"In the private sector, for a chief financial officer to have this systemic breakdown and this loss of risk controls, they would be shown the door so fast it would make their head spin, they sure wouldn't be getting an increase in their base salary, and they sure wouldn't be getting a bonus,” Silagy told Beard. 

"I personally wouldn't have confidence in the team you have,” he added, “and I would ask you to really take a hard look at what signals you're sending to folks internally so that they understand the gravity of what they're doing or not doing.”

"Serious, systemic" weaknesses
The operational audit, covering July 2022 through December 2023, found:

• Delayed payments: 258 unpaid vendor invoices totaling $4.6 million as of December 2023, with some invoices unpaid for over 1,000 days. Of 30 sampled payments, eight were delayed by 50–388 days, violating state law requiring payment within 40 days.
• Accounting discrepancies: Errors in reporting restricted and unrestricted investment income, and $88.4 million in unsupported consultant-prepared entries for the 2023-24 fiscal year. One entry falsely inflated accounts receivable and financial aid revenues by $31.3 million.
• Lack of oversight: Consultants hired to prepare financial statements made 28 entries totaling $683.4 million without documented verification by FAMU staff.

Chronic payment delays have prompted vendors—including Office Depot, Best Buy, Apple, and local supplier Battery Source, FAMU’s primary golf cart provider—to sever ties with the university, from time to time, sparking widespread frustration among faculty, staff, and researchers.

Ongoing reforms and unresolved risks

FAMU's reliance on outside consultants in the DAFS, where senior leaders—including CFO Rebecca Brown, Associate VP Kendall Jones, and AVP Mattie Hood—lack formal financial expertise has not gone unnoticed.  BOG observers have condemned this leadership vacuum, labeling Brown's rise as clear "example of someone who has been promoted well above their abilities."  

“When loyalty trumps proficiency in fiscal leadership, systemic failures become inevitable,” one BOG source noted, underscoring concerns about the divisions leadership. 

Last April, Kenneth Wilson, a highly touted certified public accountant (CPA) who was  appointed as FAMU’s comptroller, resigned abruptly after just one month in the role following a contentious clash with Hood.  The departure underscored ongoing turbulence within the division. 

During Brown's two stints leading the division, totaling 3.5 years, multiple staffers within the department told Rattler Nation that she has cultivated a reputation for autocratic control, with employees privately dubbing her “Queen Becky” for allegedly governing operations as a personal fiefdom. Critics claim her leadership prioritizes centralized authority over collaborative governance, fostering a culture of top-down decision-making that some describe as isolating and counterproductive.

Amid heightened scrutiny following the Board of Governors’ rebuke, FAMU stakeholders now demand urgent, visible reforms and accountability to salvage trust in the institution’s fiscal leadership—with many calling for systemic overhauls to break what critics describe as a cycle of dysfunction.