Photo by Solomon Crenshaw Jr.
Jennifer Cornett started as Mountain Brook’s assistant city manager and finance director this past fall.
Jennifer Cornett might call herself the favorite niece of her uncle, Steve Larson, who before retiring was a very successful banker in New York City.
“I always had an affinity for numbers,” Mountain Brook’s assistant city manager and finance director said. “Because of my interest in numbers, I asked him, ‘Uncle Steve, what do you think I should be when I grow up?’”
Larson suggested that his niece needed to be a certified public accountant. If he had to do it over again, he said he would do the same.
Cornett took that advice to heart.
“Uncle Steve, who I think is the greatest of all time, is telling me I really ought to do that,” she said. “In fact, I saw him last week, and he said, ‘You were the only niece of mine that listened to my advice,’ and it’s true. I’m the only numbers person in the group of 12 nieces and nephews.”
Steve Boone vetted the candidates who would succeed him when he was promoted to city manager with the retirement of Sam Gaston. He was part of the four-member panel with Mayor Graham Smith, Councilman Lloyd Shelton and a member of the finance committee to pick the hire.
Cornett started with Mountain Brook this past fall. Boone said Cornett’s candidacy was helped by her technical experience.
“She carried herself in a very professional manner,” he said. “I guess it was her background, education and experience ultimately.”
Living in Mountain Brook was a bonus.
“There’s not a requirement that that position be a resident of Mountain Brook,” Boone said. “It just happened to work out that way. Living here is not a prerequisite, but I can tell you that when you work in your home community, it just means more. That’s not to say that someone that lives outside of the community would not do an outstanding job as well.”
Cornett said Boone was part of her reason for seeking the Mountain Brook job.
“Steve Boone is widely recognized as probably the best finance person, city finance person in the state,” she said. “He wouldn’t tell you that, but other people would, so the idea that I could come work alongside him and learn from him and then also be able to serve the city where I live made this really appealing.”
Cornett came to Mountain Brook after just shy of two years as finance director in Hoover. She admitted she was somewhat surprised by the difference in going from big-city Hoover to small-city Mountain Brook. The same tasks must be done, but there are fewer people to do them.
“What you’ve got is people in roles who are touching a lot of different things,” Cornett said of coming to Mountain Brook. “At Hoover, if we had a highway project or a sidewalk project that was happening, we had an engineering department that was managing all of that. My role in that was just accounting for all of that, the financial reporting side of that.
“Here, we don’t have engineers that are employed by the city; we have engineers that we hire as consultants,” she said. “But I’m involved in every piece of that. It’s exciting. I’m learning a lot of new things that I would not have had an opportunity to work on at Hoover.”
