Tanya Green Greenlee’s world as the senior vice president of finance for Burroughs & Chapin in Myrtle Beach, S.C., isn’t all spreadsheets and calculators. The majority of her workday involves people—coworkers, shareholders, auditors and property managers. That’s what she loves about accounting, working with people to tell the financial side of the story.
Greenlee ’94 does it well, so well that she has been sought after professionally and currently sits on the South Carolina Board of Accountancy*.
“For me accounting makes sense—the debits and credits, the bottom line,” says Greenlee, “but I’m a people person as well. I think that’s a huge benefit in this line of work.”
Greenlee went to work right after graduation for Coopers & Lybrand (now PricewaterhouseCoopers) with sorority sister Margaret Young ’92, who remained with the firm and is a partner. A few years later Greenlee was offered a job as controller of Beaufort Memorial Hospital, where she worked for seven years before taking her current position with Burroughs & Chapin, one of the largest private landholders in the state.
“It’s a very old company, established in the 1890s, and rooted deep within Myrtle Beach. They once owned most of the Grand Strand. Many, many churches, parks and charitable organizations currently sit on land donated by the company,” says Greenlee. She also points out that virtually every oceanfront beach access area along the Grand Strand was made possible because of a Burroughs & Chapin land donation.
According to Greenlee, the company owns Broadway at the Beach, Barefoot Landing, Coastal Grand Mall in a joint venture and several other retail shopping centers as well as golf courses (also a joint venture), mini-golf courses and other land up and down the coast. Broadway at the Beach alone gets more than 14 million visitors a year. The work is fun, interesting and packed with considerations, systems and planning that shore up the South Carolina tourism industry. For instance, Greenlee is on the Burroughs & Chapin hurricane team.
“How do we get employees away from danger? How do we ensure that they’re paid? How do we conduct business if we don’t have a physical office? What do we do if there is no electricity? Those are the type of questions we have to be able to answer,” says Greenlee. “I work in a world of numbers, but there’s so much more to being an accountant. I love it.”
*Greenlee sat on the Board of Accountancy with Trey Kannaday ’93, who died on Jan. 15, 2015 (see In Memoriam). “He was such a wonderful guy,” says Greenlee. “I enjoyed so much catching up with him, and then he was gone. His death was heartbreaking and a reminder to live each day to its fullest.”
by Jo Ann Mitchell Brasington ’89