New archdiocesan CFO Dirk Wild eager to share gifts

By Peter Finney Jr.
Clarion Herald

Dirk J. Wild, who served as the chief financial officer of two public companies and two private equity-owned companies in New Orleans and Baton Rouge, has been named the new chief financial officer of the Archdiocese of New Orleans.

Archbishop Gregory Aymond made the announcement Sept. 21 in a letter to priests of the archdiocese.

Wild, a certified public accountant, a 1985 graduate of Jesuit High School and a parishioner of St. Catherine of Siena Parish in Metairie, will begin his duties on Oct. 3.

“Mr. Wild comes to the Archdiocese of New Orleans with over 30 years of experience in business,” Archbishop Aymond said in his letter to priests. “He has served on the executive level in strategic planning, corporate finance, accounting, budgeting and forecasting.

“(He) is eager to use his gifts to foster the ministry of Christ in the Archdiocese of New Orleans and to help us be good stewards of the gifts God has given us.”

As a CPA, Wild worked from 1990-2001 at Arthur Andersen in New Orleans, where he served as a senior manager in assurance and business advisory services.

From 2001-10, he was on the strategic executive team for The Shaw Group Inc., a $7 billion Fortune 500 company in Baton Rouge, serving variously as the chief accounting officer, chief financial officer and the vice president of administration.

The Shaw Group provided technology, engineering, procurement, construction, maintenance, consulting and facilities management services for public and private clients in the energy, chemical, environmental, infrastructure and emergency response markets.

“That’s really where I gained a significant amount of my experience,” Wild said. “After Katrina, Shaw did a tremendous amount of recovery work in New Orleans. It was one of the companies that did a lot of the pumping out of water from New Orleans, right after the city flooded. It did everything post-Katrina, including blue tarps, and it did a lot of flood-mitigation work for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.”

Wild went on to serve as senior vice president and chief financial officer of Globalstar, Inc., a Covington-based firm specializing in mobile voice and data communications services via satellite.

In the private equity field, Wild later served as executive vice president and CFO of Dynamic Energy Services International, LLC, in New Orleans (2013-15) and as CFO of Bernhard, LLC, in Baton Rouge (2016-18).

Since 2018, Wild has been managing partner of Ulric Wilde Consulting, which offers financial consulting work for businesses.

Wild said he hopes to use his expertise in helping the archdiocese fulfill its mission.

“I’ve always been committed to south Louisiana and the New Orleans community,” Wild said. “When I was in the executive positions at Shaw in Baton Rouge for those 10 years, I didn’t have the opportunity to get involved in public service and in the community as I would have liked because of the time I would have used to do those kinds of things.

“I’ve been looking for a way in which I can use my business career and give back to the community in some way. I’ve obviously been a cradle Catholic and have been a member of St. Catherine of Siena Parish for 30 years. This is something I’m very passionate about.”

Transparency, stewardship
Wild is coming into his new position with the archdiocese in the midst of a Chapter 11 reorganization that began in May 2020.

“I do think that it is our responsibility to be good stewards of the assets we have been endowed with – the generations and generations who have given to the Catholic Church,” Wild said. “A big part of that is to have a tremendous amount of transparency and making sure everyone understands what our positions are, what our assets are, what our commitments are and then how we are using all the gifts we’ve received to carry on our mission.

“I think one of the things I’m very good at is taking very complicated business issues and boiling them down into something that’s simple – or at least understandable – so that people can understand what’s going on.”

Wild has served as an adjunct lecturer at the Tulane University A.B. Freeman School of Business. He holds a bachelor of science degree in accounting from Louisiana Tech University and a master’s degree in professional accounting from the University of Texas.

Wild has been married for 31 years to his wife Kathryn. They have two daughters – Audrey, a sophomore at the University of Notre Dame, and Samantha, a junior at St. Mary’s Dominican High School.

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