Marla Runnels has worked in property management for 18 years, holding various positions from Leasing Consultant in Florida after college, to her current role as Director of Central Services for Cortland.
In 2014 she established Cortland’s Account Settlement department, a centralized team dedicated to managing communications with and collecting balances from former residents across all Cortland communities. Today, she oversees this team, as they provide all facets of customer service to former residents, resolve disputes, and coach sites on best practices, while collecting over $4 million annually in bad debt.
She also designed, implemented, and oversees a community audit to ensure compliance with Cortland processes. This team reviews all aspects of site record-keeping, documents, and accounting practices for each community individually, analyzing financial impact and providing scoring, feedback, and coaching to site associates to improve performance and compliance.
Lastly, she oversees Cortland’s Applications Support team, which provides support and training to all onsite and corporate users of Cortland’s property management software and other associated applications, while identifying opportunities to create efficiencies and update processes in ways that bring value to the organization.