There’s an Initiative That’s Right for You

By Gayle M. Whittemore, CPA

On behalf of the chapter’s board of directors and staff, I want to thank you for your continued support and participation. As your new president, it is my honor to thank everyone who has committed their time and resources to participate in an active board role, with special thanks going to Jenny Bolsky, who masterfully led our chapter past the 10,000 member mark. As everyone knows, behind a great board is great professional staff, so I also want to thank our returning program director, Maria Nazario, and welcome our newest program associate, Barbara Petersson, who will join Sandy Benitez and Delia Rincon. I’d also like to thank all of the other professional staff who are focused on providing valuable services to our members.

In the past few weeks, I have had the opportunity to meet with a large number of members who have given freely of their time and expertise in the pursuit of meeting CalCPA’s mission and strategic plan. CalCPA’s strategies priorities are:

• To advocate for members on issues that affect our profession
• To enhance and promote the visibility of the profession and CalCPA
• To attract, educate and support CPAs in our professional and personal development.

I have to be honest. Before I became involved in CalCPA, I didn’t realize the depth and breadth of the work that was being accomplished. I certainly knew about and participated in the legislative outreach trips to Sacramento, and I had engaged in a number of discussion groups and technical committees. But what I have come to find is that our organization is the active home of many specific initiatives.

My goal for the coming year is to encourage you to join with others who are equally committed to developing these initiatives, including the Young and Emerging Professionals Group, chapter scholarship, Leadership Institute, mentoring program, and discussion and technical committee (which number 24 and have frequent meetings throughout Los Angeles). I also encourage support of the Women’s Initiative, legislative outreach efforts, Meet the Firms, interaction with schools, networking events, business and industry outreach, financial literacy objective and our community service outreach. I wasn’t kidding when I said that there truly is a plethora of opportunities for anyone who wants to expand their participation in CalCPA and our chapter. I encourage you to engage in at least one new initiative to give you a taste of the wonderful work that is being done on your behalf.

As I mentioned in last month’s President’s Message, our profession truly is a life raft for many who are drifting in the churning financial sea. We’ve received growing interest from attorneys and finance professionals about our knowledge base and skill sets, which is why we are developing educational and promotional joint ventures with attorneys and bankers. We have partnerships with the Los Angeles Business Journal and San Fernando Business Journal to publicize the good work that our profession provides and the critical knowledge that CPAs hold. For those of you who have not yet participated in networking events or the ABC Breakfast, I strongly urge you to come out and meet your fellow professionals. For me, these opportunities have led to new professional friendships, as well as new business. I don’t know about you, but increasing one’s practice is a big plus in these trying times.

In the coming months we will continue to inform you of the many wonderful programs, social events and other opportunities to develop and mentor our young and emerging professionals.

On behalf of your board of directors, we hope you will partake in all that your organization has to offer. I promise you, you will be very glad that you did.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 25th, 2010 at 5:19 pm and is filed under President's Message. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.