Tony Burger has been selected as the university’s new director of procurement services. Burger’s appointment was effective Dec. 1. He has served as the interim director of procurement services since June 2018.
Burger is responsible for a number of essential universitywide functions, including purchasing, travel and expense, strategic sourcing, printing, copying and mailing, and property disposition. Procurement Services is part of U-M’s Finance Division.
“Tony is very well known to the university community. His experience both as interim director of procurement services and in a variety of other roles at U-M, along with his institutional knowledge, make him an ideal fit for this job,” said Brian Smith, associate vice president for finance. “He’s always maintained — regardless of his position — a keen focus on supporting U-M’s missions of teaching, research and patient care.”
As part of the decision-making process to hire Burger, Smith gathered feedback from Finance employees, customers and other key stakeholders across the university.
“Since my arrival in Finance last summer, I’ve heard many positive comments from our employees and customers as well as other colleagues at U-M about Tony’s commitment to providing top-drawer customer service and partnering with members of the university community to make it easy for them to do business with Procurement Services,” Smith said. “Everyone was very enthusiastic about, and supportive of, Tony becoming the permanent director of procurement services.”
Burger has more than 30 years of financial and project management experience at U-M. He has a Bachelor of Arts degree in accounting from Eastern Michigan University.
“I’m very excited to join Procurement Services on a permanent basis and am really looking forward to building on the momentum we’ve created in the department,” Burger said.
“We’ve got a great team and are really committed to collaborating with our customers at the university to ensure the procurement process is straightforward and clear. At the end of the day, our main goal is to actively partner with our customers and make it easy for them to focus on teaching, research and patient care.”
