Richard is the Executive Director and CFO for the JPA. Since inception of the Authority on January 1, 2002, he has worked with the Board of Directors to implement the Authority’s strategic plan and manages day-to-day operations with a staff of professionals. Other regional-benefit programs Richard helped establish and manage include: serving as executive director of two other shared-services JPAs; chairing the STARS (Self-Directed Tax-Advantaged Retirement System), a statewide buying pool of public agencies for Deferred Compensation Defined Contribution services at competitive pricing for public employees; and served as the first president of the Municipal Insurance Cooperative, a pooled purchasing program.
Richard began is public service career as a teacher in a public school system 30 years ago, and spent most of his pre-JPA career in municipal finance with a special district, cities and a county. He served as Director of Management & Finance for Arlington County (VA) and as Finance Director for the City of San Carlos. Richard attended George Washington University as an undergraduate and Law School student, received a BA from Columbus State University, and completed the Berkeley Executive Seminar in the Goldman School of Public Policy and the UVA Weldon Center for Public Policy.
Sophia Selivanoff is the Deputy Executive Director/Client Services for Regional Government Services. Sophia’s role is to coordinate and initiate various business plans with service line leaders and administrative staff to meet current and emerging public agency consultation needs. Sophia also facilitates a consistent and positive client relationship with RGS, by focusing on the core values of public service and teamwork.
Since joining RGS in 2009, Sophia has delivered effective, creative and flexible approaches to personnel administration in local government agencies; and has built a reputation among partner agencies for her HR knowledge and her commitment to serving the best interests of our clients. Sophia is passionate about making a positive difference in the work lives of public agency staff and committed to an ongoing and engaged partnership with agency staff that results in enhancing their ability to deliver confident, competent, and caring service to their communities.
With the enthusiastic support of her growing team, she successfully led the development of RGS’ regionally-based HR team service model, resulting in teams based in the Bay area, the Sacramento region, and Southern California. These teams contain an extensive array of HR talent with dozens of seasoned generalists and multiple specialty skill sets, significantly increasing RGS’ capacity to deliver a full range of cost-effective and responsive HR management services to local governments throughout California. Sophia is integrating this team-based vision of extended service capability with all of RGS’ consultative services.
When not at her desk, Sophia is most likely found (or not!) hiking with her husband in a remote corner of the planet, binoculars in hand, marveling at the world’s incredibly beautiful and engaging wildlife.
Rich Oppenheim joined Regional Government Services Authority as a Human Resources Advisor to support external clients, and also work on HR-related issues internal to RGS. He has worked for state and local government for 15 years gaining experience in a variety of HR and organization-wide projects and programs. His work involves building, leading, and implementing strategic HR and organizational development programs. He brings the ability to merge big picture innovation with ground-level implementation and deliverables. He is a proponent of mining information from organizations to produce data-driven decisions, and technological/process innovation in HR practices. His wide range of experience includes Examination/Selection, Strategic Talent Acquisition, Strategic Planning, Organizational Development, Talent Management/Development, eLearning Development/Planning, Mentoring Programs, Leadership Development, Succession Planning, Performance Management, Change Management, Onboarding, Knowledge Management, and Organization-wide Culture Change initiatives.
Rich completed undergraduate work in Psychology and graduate work in Industrial/Organizational Psychology.
Chris has an undergraduate degree and MPA from Cal State Fullerton.
Chris is RGS’ talent management advisor, finding and placing a variety of skilled staff to fill the needs of partner agencies for all service areas as well as for projects, assessments and interim placements.
Anna Marie Will joined RGS in 2018 as a Coordinating Advisor. Anna Marie has significant experience as a public agency Risk Manager and as an Underwriter for multiple property and casualty lines. Anna Marie has provided management, coordination, and implementation of the risk and insurance programs for public agencies liabilities, property, transportation, workplace safety and catastrophic insurance programs. She has developed and managed Risk Management department budgets and communication, including representing the agency’s Risk Management program to Board of Directors, staff, and other governmental and community entities. She has developed, managed, and delivered employee safety programs. In addition, Anna Marie has negotiated and managed contracts with third party vendors and provided public works construction project supervision.
Anna Marie has a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology from California State University, Sacramento and a Master of Business Administration from the University of Phoenix.
Christina joined RGS in 2018 providing Human Resources services to RGS partner agencies. In 2019 she joined the authority’s internal team where she provides HR related support to RGS employees. She provides onboarding services; employee training coordination; benefits administration; leave management and workers compensation coordination; and policy and procedure interpretation and administration.
Prior to joining RGS, Christina has 8 years of public sector human resources and financial experience. Her experience includes recruitment and selection, hiring and onboarding, employee training, payroll processing and administration, creating human resources policies and procedures, interpretation and application of agencies policies and labor agreements.
Christina has a Bachelor of Science in Organizational Leadership with a specialization in Human Resources Management from Colorado State University.
Hermelinda Flores joined RGS in 2020 as a Project Advisor where she supports the authority’s internal Finance team as well as RGS partner agencies. Hermelinda brings over 20 years of administrative and financial experience in private and governmental institutions. Her expertise includes payroll; CalPERS reporting; Accounts Payables and Accounts Receivables; journal entries and account recording keeping. Additionally, Hermelinda is skilled in records management; file maintenance; and reports and agendas used for public meetings.
Hermelinda holds a Bachelor of Arts in Business Management from Menlo College, and is currently pursuing a Master of Arts in Education from Brandman University.
Sandra is responsible for all client invoicing and assists the Finance and Operations Manager in special projects related to JPA financial operations. Sandra Strong joined RGS in 2018 as a Technical Advisor specializing in payroll. She has 9 years of experience in Payroll/Accounting in the occupational sector. Five of the nine years she managed all operations of a private organization’s human resources, benefits and payroll administration. She maintained payroll controls and assured that proper policies, procedures, rules and regulations were met.
Sandra has received a MBA from California State University of Sacramento in 2017. She has a B.S. in Business Administration with a concentration in Accounting and Finance from Simon Fraser University in British Columbia, Canada.