Jennifer Becker's 25 Years Leading Burbank City Finance

Jennifer Becker didn’t plan to spend her career at City Hall. She came up as a music student, clarinet in hand, before finding her way into public finance. Twenty-five years later, she runs the Financial Services Department for the City of Burbank and is steering some of the most consequential infrastructure projects the city has planned in years.

Becker is currently the Financial Services Director for Burbank, a role that puts her at the center of budget decisions, capital planning, and the day-to-day financial machinery that keeps city services running. This month, as part of a series spotlighting Burbank leaders, the city highlighted her career and her approach to the job she’s held in various capacities for more than two decades.

The work ahead is substantial. Becker’s department is in the early stages of replacing an Enterprise Resource Planning software system that the city originally implemented ahead of Y2K. That’s not a typo. Burbank’s core financial management software has been running since the late 1990s, and the department still relies heavily on paper forms and manual processes. Becker describes the upcoming replacement as transformational, but she’s clear-eyed about what it requires. The implementation will pull significant hours from staff across multiple departments over the next couple of years before any of the benefits arrive.

Beyond the technology overhaul, Becker is involved in planning for two major civic projects: a new Central Library and a redesigned Civic Center. Both have been discussed in Burbank planning circles for years, and both carry price tags and logistical complexity that make the financial department’s role central, not peripheral.

Becker describes her leadership approach as collaborative, a word that can mean very little in practice but seems to carry actual weight in how she talks about her team. She credits her department’s ability to navigate complex decisions to the expertise of the people around her rather than to top-down direction. She also speaks openly about being risk-averse early in her career, which she frames as a reasonable trait in finance, and about becoming more comfortable with decision-making and even with making mistakes as she’s gained experience.

The career advice she returns to is simple: be yourself. She argues that leaders who try to model themselves too closely on their predecessors lose the advantage of their own instincts and values. It’s a practical observation dressed up as a philosophical one, and it fits someone who took an unconventional route into municipal finance.

What stands out in Becker’s account of her career isn’t the longevity itself, though 25 years at a single organization is genuinely rare. It’s that she gets asked about it regularly at professional events across California, as if staying put requires explanation. Her answer focuses on the people. She describes colleagues who have become family and a city that has a specific character worth showing up for. That kind of attachment to place is common among longtime Burbank residents and, apparently, among the people running the departments that keep it functioning.

Burbank’s Financial Services Department handles more than budgets. It sits in the middle of major capital decisions, vendor contracts, technology infrastructure, and the financial reporting that underpins public trust in city government. Getting the ERP replacement right matters in ways that will show up in how efficiently residents interact with city services for the next decade or more. Getting it wrong, or leaving the current system in place even longer, carries its own costs.

Becker is not a public-facing figure in the way that elected officials are. Most Burbank residents have never heard her name, even if they’ve paid a parking ticket or renewed a permit online. That’s true of most people doing serious work inside City Hall. Her 25-year run through the finance department, from entry-level roles to director, is the kind of institutional continuity that cities depend on but rarely celebrate.

The clarinet, for what it’s worth, apparently didn’t go to waste. The discipline required to master an instrument and the patience to work inside a large public institution over decades may not be as different as they first appear.