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Steve Merz

Executive Vice President & CFO

Stephen P. Merz is Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer of the Woodruff Arts Center, Inc. He was appointed to that position in the fall 2001. Prior to that, he held the positions of EVP for Finance and Operations from 1991 to 2001 and VP of Finance from 1981 to 1991. During his thirty year tenure at the Center, Mr. Merz has managed on behalf of the Center all of the physical expansions taking the campus from one building to now eight facilities. Mr. Merz leads the investment management process and was instrumental in revamping management of the Center’s endowment assets by implementing policies which provided more diversification, more professional outside managers and a comprehensive spending policy. As a result, the Center’s investment returns consistently rank in the top quartile of similarly sized endowments. Prior to joining the Arts Center, Mr. Merz was a Manager with the accounting firm of Deloitte and Touche. While a member of the audit team at Deloitte, he specialized in audits of financial institutions and not-for-profit social organizations. He graduated from Kent State University in 1972 with a BBA and from Emory University in 1981 with an MBA. He is a member of Beta Alpha Psi, the national honors business organization and the International Honor Society, Beta Gamma Sigma. Mr. Merz is also a CPA licensed in the State of Ohio. He is a Registered Investment Advisor. In 2006, Mr. Merz started GarlandMerz Consulting LLC. GarlandMerz provides investment consulting and management to small and mid-sized endowments and foundations. The objective of the enterprise is to provide professional expertise to endowments and foundations who heretofore believed such expertise was not available or affordable.