Totten assumes new role as CANCO VP of Administration

Carl A. Nelson & Company (CANCO) is pleased to announce the selection of Julie Totten as the company's new Vice President of Administration. Totten brings a wealth of finance and accounting experience to the role, as well as some noteworthy personal connections to the 108-year-old firm.

"My family has a long, positive history with Carl A. Nelson & Company," she said, "and I'm just thrilled to be a part of it."

Totten assumed her duties April 19, 2021.

Totten is a Burlington native whose mother, the late Jill Blackwood, at one time co-owned the Sterzing's Potato Chip Company. Carl A. Nelson & Company built the Sterzing's plant on Charles Street in Burlington. Totten's family connection to CANCO goes back another generation, to when her grandfather was at Case Company and was involved in projects at the plant with company founder Carl A. Nelson.

A 1991 graduate from Burlington High School, she earned a bachelor of arts degree in Public Accounting from Illinois Wesleyan University, in Bloomington-Normal, Illinois, in 1995. Totten has public accounting experience, as well as experience with Automatic Data Processing (ADP) in its software division in Chicago and Dallas-Fort Worth. She also worked five years in accounting for an international private equity firm in Texas before relocating back to the Midwest in 2008 with her husband, Matt, and their now-12-year-old son, Ethan. 

Prior to coming to CANCO, Totten was Chief Financial Officer and then Chief Client Officer for Professional Swine Management LLC, in Carthage Illinois. While the nuts and bolts of her new job and her former one are similar, Totten said that by coming from outside the construction industry, she hopes to "bring a fresh set of eyes" to complement a Carl A. Nelson & Company team she described as "so impressive, and so experienced."

Totten resides in Keokuk with her husband, son and 10-year-old daughter, Avery.

In their lives at home, the Tottens enjoy comic book movies, travel, all things Disney, and time spent with friends and family.

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Carl A. Nelson & Company was founded in 1913, and with offices in Burlington and Cedar Falls, Iowa, provides professional design-build and construction management services — as well as performing as a general contractor — in a range of markets including industrial, healthcare, education and recreation.