New finance director for Council

Monday marked the first day for the Mohawk Council of Kahnawake (MCK)’s new director of Financial Services, with Nikola Mirkovic taking over the reins from Erica Delisle last November.

“I’m looking forward to meeting more people, because I’ll have more exposure to dealing with the executive team, senior staff, and other directors,” said Mirkovic, who has been a financial controller at MCK since 2019. “I know a lot of people by name or from email requests but some I’ve never met face-to-face, so I’m looking forward to getting to know them more.”

Mirkovic was selected for the role after a rigorous application process led by MCK’s executive financial officer, Kyle Delisle. The application included a three-hour case study component as well as interviews, and Delisle said that Mirkovic’s experience made him stand out as a particularly good candidate amongst several candidates for the role.

As well as his experience at the MCK, Mirkovic is a chartered professional accountant and holds a commerce degree in accounting from the John Molson School of Business at Concordia University.

Mirkovic is also completing his Certified Aboriginal Management Designation from the Aboriginal Financial Officers Association of Canada, as well as his Public Sector Certification from Chartered Professional Accountants Canada.

He also worked as an auditor at MNP, a professional services firm that MCK uses for their own audits. That experience means that Mirkovic is particularly well-prepared to lead the process of preparing for auditing, one of the largest tasks in MCK’s financial office.

“He has the experience, both in terms of overseeing the accounting system and in terms of working through the audit,” Kyle Delisle said. “Nikola already is very familiar with our processes here at MCK, so it should make the transition fairly easy.”

As financial controller, Mirkovic became well-acquainted with the way MCK works, and he learned valuable lessons from Erica throughout the years.

“I worked very closely with her, and I became very familiar with what she did,” Mirkovic said. “I find that she kind of trained me for the past five years.”

Erica Delisle said that Mirkovic is a good fit for the job.

“The Mohawk Council is in very good hands, he’s very capable, and very qualified,” she said. “I can’t predict the future, but I think that Nikola will definitely bring the finance unit to the next level.”

Erica has moved to Kahnawake Shakotiia’takehnhas Community Services (KSCS) where she’ll be the organization’s new director of financial services. She said that she’s just a phone call away if any questions should arise.

“Just because I’m not there doesn’t mean I don’t care, and I will offer my support in sharing any type of knowledge I could provide,” she said.

Kyle said that Mirkovic’s first few days in his new role have gone smoothly.

“I think it’s looking very good, he’s hit the ground running,” he said.

As well as focusing on the next fiscal year’s budget and the audit, Mirkovic said he’s also keen to work on other financial initiatives, like the push to make certain processes in the financial office entirely digital.

“There’s certain things like approval processes, where instead of gathering signatures manually, we’d want to get it digitally, which would make it easier,” he said.

“It’s easier to have things digitally rather than having a bunch of paper around that slows down the process, so I’m looking forward to that.”

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