By SUSAN JONES
Hari Sastry, who has served as Pitt’s chief financial officer since October 2018, is leaving at the end of February for a similar position at Georgetown University, where he starts on April 1.
Thurman Wingrove, the University’s controller, will serve as acting CFO starting in March, as the University begins a comprehensive search for Sastry’s replacement early this spring.
A Chicago native, Sastry came to Pitt in 2018 after serving as director of the Office of U.S. Foreign Assistance Resources at the U.S. Department of State. He said this week that he has several connections to Georgetown, including getting his master’s degree in public policy there. His sister attended Georgetown as an undergrad and his brother-in-law currently is teaching at the Washington, D.C., school. He also lived in the Washington area for 20 years.
Pitt was his first foray into working in academia. “I always had it on my radar because it was a good transition from government. It is mission oriented. It is the nonprofit sector and so your goals and your focus (are) very much on the mission and trying to figure out how to align resources to achieve that. And I think that a lot of that is similar to what I was doing before.”
He said that he “got spoiled” at Pitt, “because I got dropped into a situation where I had a great team around me (of around 200 people). And it was really an enjoyable five years. And so I thought this is something that I really do enjoy and so staying in higher ed was an easy decision.”
Georgetown, the nation’s oldest Catholic university, is often listed in the top 25 schools nationally, but it has a smaller enrollment, endowment and research budget than Pitt.
Sastry spoke to the University Times this week as he prepares to transition out of his job here.
His and his department’s biggest accomplishments
Sastry said there are a few things where “we’ve moved the ball forward really well.”
One of those was making the office “a little bit more outward facing; a little bit more making connections with the different schools and that connected to the new budget model that we were doing.” He said that has reoriented the CFOs office “to be a little bit more of a customer service, kind of helping the units, helping the schools figure out … how to align their financial plans with their strategic direction.”
The second one, he said, was more at the senior level, “making sure that we had a really good plan that connected our capital, our operations, our medical side, all together — laying out a really good strategy on cash management, on debt structure, that kind of thing, I think was really important.”
The office is two years into building an enterprise risk management system, Sastry said, and “I think having that in place is going to really benefit the University long term.”
He also pointed to efforts they’ve made to meet goals in the Plan for Pitt, including increasing diversity spending, and to develop a strategic plan for the CFO’s office that “really outlines what are we trying to accomplish.”
On challenges over the past five years
Sastry said the two biggest challenges during his tenure were the uncertainties of the pandemic and of funding from the state legislature.
“COVID was just something that we obviously hadn’t seen before,” he said, “and the real challenge there was … the uncertainty was so great. We didn’t understand the scale of what was going to happen. So you were really trying to plan for two extremes of what was going to happen.”
Pitt weathered the pandemic financially better than several of its peers, but wasn’t unscathed. While there were no layoffs here, there were retirement-incentive packages for faculty and staff. The budget for 2020-21 included a salary freeze, a 78 percent reduction in capital spending and a permanent budget cut of 3.7 percent across the board on average, along with a one-time cut of 5 percent. After losing around $140 million in fiscal year 2020, Pitt’s endowment bounced back and shot up during 2020-21 — gaining more than $1.4 billion and ending at $5.68 billion.
Sastry said that period required a lot of hard work from his team, not just within the office, but also in building trust with the schools. The message was, “We’re going to get through this, but we’re just going to have to take it a little bit slow.”
He attributes part of the University’s success through the pandemic in the strength of the Pitt brand. He said that speaks to all the work that faculty and staff have done over the years to build Pitt’s reputation.
“You could see the students not only wanting to come and learn over the pandemic, but as soon as (they) started coming back in person that ‘21-‘22 year, it was a three-year flood of people coming in. I think the only thing you can attribute that to is the strength of Pitt both locally and nationally. I think it was pretty clear that we have a product, basically, that is in high demand.”
Pitt went into the pandemic in good shape financially, he said, “and then that demand just never went away. In fact, it probably increased a little bit.”
But Pitt still needs to worry about the drop in college-age students in the Northeast over the next several years and that “you’re keeping education affordable, and you’re attracting the students that you’re trying to attract.”
On state funding
The past few years have definitely presented some challenges on the state budget front. This year’s appropriation was not approved until November, and kept funding at the same level it has been since 2019.
Because Pitt set its budget before the state funding was approved, Sastry said there’s still some uncertainty about how the University budget will weather getting less from the state than anticipated. He said there haven’t been any significant across-the-board cuts, “because we were planning on some of this uncertainty already.”
“I think we’re going to monitor our budgets over the next couple of months and see what it really ends up being. It just puts more pressure on some of the stuff that we’re doing now that we know we have to, and reduces some of the investment we can make back into the University.”
In 2022, there were questions about whether the state would cut funding completely, largely because of political issues unrelated to how the money is spent. Pitt has said repeatedly that all the general funding from the state goes to lower tuition for in-state students.
“A couple years ago, we had two different scenarios. Basically, are we going to get funding at all?” he said. “That would raise a whole bunch of questions. … As I think we testified, that would change the nature of the relationship with Pitt and the state.”
The other scenario was getting something close to what Pitt or the governor requested (around a 5 percent increase that year).
“I think the scenario where it’s kind of a marginal increases is relatively easy to plan for,” he said. “The harder one is if there’s a significant reduction … but we’ve thought through that, we have some plans, but those are just plans until it actually happens.”
While many focus on the financial impact if the state cuts funding, “I think what everybody’s worried about is how does that impact the mission of teaching and research. … I’m confident we’re strong enough to weather some storms, but I think we’d have to answer that question really well.”
On the new budget model
The responsibility-centered budget model Pitt is now using is in a three-year cycle, Sastry said. There was a year where the new model, which puts more budgeting power with the schools, was run in parallel to the old one. This year was the first live year, and then there will be assessments on how it went for the following year.
Sastry said they’ve talked frequently with deans, and he thinks it’s going pretty well. “I think some of the deans, especially those who come from models that are similar, you can tell they’re getting it right away, … and I think the other deans will have that experience very shortly and they’ll get it right away.”
He said that “I think it’s putting the decision point and the point of innovation at the school level where also the point of responsibility around budgets occurs. … If you can align dollars with where that decision-making occurs, I think that’s critical.”
On what he’ll miss about Pitt and Pittsburgh
“The first thing I’ll miss is going to be the people, for sure,” he said. “I made some really good relationships, really good people. It was just fun to come to work.”
Sastry said he’ll also miss all the little places in Pittsburgh and Oakland, specifically, to go for a work lunch or night out. “Pittsburgh is one of those towns that has everything, whatever you want. … And I don’t think people quite realize it until you’re in the city and you’re living there for a while.
“It’s not just that it has everything that you might want, it still feels like everything’s not a chain. There’s a Pittsburgh flavor to almost everything you go to.”
Susan Jones is editor of the University Times. Reach her at suejones@pitt.edu or 724-244-4042.
Have a story idea or news to share? Share it with the University Times.