#WomenAtCPA: Macy Douglas

Women in Leadership: Macy Douglas, Director of Treasury Operations and the Texas Bullion Depository

Macy Douglas joined the Comptroller’s office soon after graduating from the University of Texas at Austin with a finance degree. She knew right away she had found her home.

“The Comptroller’s office has always had the reputation for being the best agency in state government,” she says. “I remember my first day at work. It was my first job out of college, and I was grinning from ear to ear, so excited to be there. And honestly, that hasn’t gone away for me. It’s been a really excellent almost 20 years.”

Douglas’ first job was in Fiscal Management, providing purchase and travel expenditure guidance to state agencies and institutions of higher education. While in Fiscal Management, Douglas held various management positions, including managing statewide payroll and the deployment of enterprise resource planning solutions. About six years ago, she moved to Treasury and is now the director of Treasury Operations and of the Texas Bullion Depository.

“Treasury brings in all state revenue. All funds, sales taxes, Texas.gov credit card payments, and cash and checks for all of the 200-plus state agencies,” Douglas says. “Most of what we receive now are electronic funds, probably 99 percent of what we bring in. We operate similar to a bank. We have a teller window at the Treasury, and we have state agency runners who bring over deposits of cash and checks.”

The Texas Bullion Depository stores precious metals for customers. “It’s a physical asset. We saw a really sharp increase in demand for that over the pandemic,” she says. “As there is insecurity in the financial markets, people will tend to go to more physical-type assets, so the depository grew substantially over the last two years.”

Douglas finds her role at Treasury fascinating and rewarding. “Just the numbers that we deal with on a daily basis in Treasury, you almost get callous to it; but we are talking about hundreds of millions of dollars flowing in any given day.”

Reflecting on her time at CPA, Douglas says “I am now able to see the whole picture. I was dealing primarily with outgoing expenditures in Fiscal Management, but over at Treasury, we are focused on the incoming revenue. It’s been the continued opportunities to learn and grow and the challenges that have kept me here.”

Both of her roles relate to assets, but Douglas believes one of Texas’ biggest assets — and what has kept her invested in the Comptroller’s office — is the employees. “I have had really outstanding mentors throughout my career that were willing to spend the time and effort on helping me develop my leadership and technical skills and allowed me the freedom to make decisions and own the results of those decisions,” she says. “I am motivated to offer the same opportunities to our employees. We have an outstanding team of dedicated employees that are here to do their best for the taxpayers of Texas.”