Instructor

Yuka Hechanova is the Guam Memorial Hospital Authority’s Chief Financial Officer overseeing a staff of almost 100 in General Accounting, Patient Registration, Patient Affairs (Billing, Collections, Follow-Up), and Medical Records. She is also an adjunct instructor of procurement at the Guam Community College. She has 20 years of Government of Guam experience in auditing and accounting including 12 years at the Office of Public Accountability where she worked her way up to Deputy Public Auditor and over 5 years at the Guam Waterworks Authority where she established the Internal Audit division and later managed the accounting department as Controller. In these roles, Yuka has been an auditee and an auditor which has provided valuable experience in understanding the challenges in government agencies, most recently as CFO of Guam’s only public hospital during the COVID-19 pandemic. Yuka’s experience with government procurement stems from her time at the OPA auditing government procurement and issuing decisions on procurement appeals. In 2015, she was part of an initiative for cooperative procurement audits in the Pacific sponsored by the Pacific Association of Supreme Audit Institutions and INTOSAI (International Organization of Supreme Audit Institutions).

Yuka holds a master’s degree in Accounting from Mississippi College, is a Guam-licensed Certified Public Accountant, Certified Internal Auditor, Certified Government Financial Manager, Certified Government Auditing Professional, and Chartered Global Management Accountant. She is actively involved in the Association of Government Accountants, Guam Chapter, currently serving as the National Council of Chapters representative and the Guam Chapter By-Laws Director. She has served as chapter president, treasurer, auditor, and 5k committee member. She is also the current treasurer of the Guam Triathlon Federation.

She is married to Manny Hechanova, the Acting Chief Information Officer at the University of Guam. They have two children, Christopher and Mika. Chris is pursuing his PhD in Humanities at Nagoya University in Japan. Mika will begin her master’s program at the University of Guam in the fall of 2021. Manny and Yuka are avid runners having completed numerous marathons in Guam, Hawaii, and Okinawa and regularly volunteer for Guam Running Club and Guam Triathlon Federation events.