Diane Havlinek is in her sixth year at Presbyterian School in Houston as the chief finance and operations officer and in the second decade of her career in independent schools. She received bachelor's and master’s degrees in electrical engineering from Cornell University and spent five years in oil and gas. To expand her professional horizons, she pursued an MBA with a concentration in finance, operations and nonprofit business from Yale University. Upon graduation, Havlinek returned to Houston and oil and gas for another five years before moving into nonprofit work at Rice University and then on to independent schools. She spent five years working internationally for independent schools in Canada and England, during which time she traveled extensively, before returning to Houston in 2012. Havlinek has worked in finance and operations at two Houston area independent schools. Her favorite part of the job is fixing processes and systems that don't work or are inefficient. In her spare time she enjoys traveling, with the goals of never visiting the same place twice and visiting more destinations off the beaten path. She recently visited both poles, in Antarctica and the Arctic Circle.