A Duke Leader in Finance

Name: Robin Miller Position: Associate vice president, Disbursement ServicesYears at Duke: 27What I do at Duke: I am responsible for all of the disbursements teams, which include Corporate Accounts Payable, Corporate Payroll Services, Employee Travel Reimbursement and our Financial Training team. I tell everybody we spend all the money and we train you how to do it properly. There’s over $5 billion running through our area and we want to manage it appropriately.If I had $5 million, I would: There’s one thing I promised my son, and we played this game when he was younger, when he was in middle school, it was: What if we won the lottery? What would we do? My son loves to read and his library didn’t have very many books. He asked that if we won the lottery, if we would buy new books for the library. That would be on the top of my list, to buy new books for the middle school and high school. I was pretty touched that he would think of others that way. My first ever job: Babysitting. I always loved the little ones, but it was particularly fun spoiling everyone else’s little ones and then returning them home.My dream job: to be a professional shopper. I love shopping for anyone, for anything. I have lots of friends that will invite me and ask for help. I always get stopped in the stores, too, and get asked to help them look for something. I must have that look. The best advice I ever received: My parents raised me to live by the golden rule. My husband and I are raising our 16-year-old son by that, to treat others the way you would like to be treated and to be kind at all times, no matter how difficult the situation may be. What I love about Duke: It’s amazing to be part of an organization that offers so many things. How many places can you go where you’re doing research and finding cures for very complex diseases and educating students to branch out into the world and be entrepreneurs? I learn something new every hour and some days, every minute. If I could have one superpower, it would be: like “Bewitched” where you could be someplace quickly, to just move myself from one place to another by a twinkle of the eye or a twitch of the nose.Something most people don’t know about me: I grew up on a dairy farm. We had all kinds of animals and we also raised tobacco. It was in the southwest corner of Orange County, near the Alamance/Chatham County line. We had 100 head of cattle, and my dad raised them with my grandfather. I said when I grow up, I’d never do this again because I’m such a girly girl. My dad used to call me a misplaced city slicker. An interesting/memorable day at work for me: I don’t want to single out just one. My staff is so dedicated and hardworking. Each team contributes to just making a difficult situation easy, and I call it pulling a rabbit out of the hat. They rise to the challenge every single day.