The town of Elon is preparing to welcome a veteran of private industry, local government, and the nonprofit sector to take over as the municipality’s new finance director.
Joseph Trollinger, the town’s pick for its next CFO, is slated to join Elon’s municipal staff on Thursday as the successor to former finance director Kathryn Barham, who now serves as the town’s director of human resources.
In announcing this staff-level addition on Tuesday, town manager Richard Roedner told Elon’s town council that Trollinger comes fresh from the eastern North Carolina community of Wallace, where he had served as finance director since 2023. Roedner added that Trollinger had previously worked for MB-F Dog Shows in Greensboro as well as Fortress RE, a now-defunct re-insurance outfit that had once operated in Burlington.
Roeder went on to assure the town’s elected leaders that they weren’t mistaken if they thought they detected something familiar about the town’s new CFO.
“Yes, he’s one of those Trollingers,” the town manager conceded. “His family is from the Elon/Burlington area, and he is using this opportunity to move back home.”
A graduate of Williams High School in Burlington, Trollinger went on to obtain a B.A. in business and economics from N.C. State University and an MBA from East Carolina.
In addition to announcing Trollinger’s impending arrival, Roedner also provided the town council with updates on some other staff-level vacancies.
The town manager said that he and his colleagues are still accepting applications for Elon’s new landscape supervisor – a post that the council agreed to add to the public works staff in the town’s current annual budget.
Roedner also reported an unexpectedly enthusiastic response to an opening for an administrative clerk in the town’s police department. According to Elon’s mayor Emily Sharpe, this civilian position has attracted something on the order of 170 applications. Roedner added that the police department has winnowed these candidates down to 12 finalists, and the department’s top brass now plans to meet these individuals for one-on-one interviews.
“It’s an extremely deep pool for that position,” the town manager noted, “and a lot of talented people have applied.”
