The Journey Continues

By Jamshed Behram Gandi, CPA

I am dedicating this month’s message to some of the activities that your chapter board is diligently working on.

After much discussion and following the lead of several other chapters, the board has decided to recognize our first chapter Distinguished Service Award. Just as we recently honored our first Young & Emerging Professional of the Year, we will now recognize a more senior member for his or her long and distinguished service to the chapter or for some extraordinary contribution to the profession. I hope this will underline the board’s recognition of our members’ accomplishments and encourage others to pursue similar achievements. The nomination deadline is May 31, and the award will be presented at our chapter lunch in June. Please consider nominating a fellow chapter member now—before our attention turns to tax season! You can download a nomination form online.

For quite some time I have thought that an evening meeting for our members in line with our very popular ABC mixer might be positively received. We have debated whether chapter members would be receptive to this, given the logistics of the city and the fact that people usually want to get home as soon as possible. We have decided to try hosting a few evening programs, such as a town hall meeting with some of our local candidates prior to the June primary.

Through the auspices of the MAP Committee, we have had two open forum meetings on succession planning, and we plan to hold a third meeting in late January. CalCPA has asked us to put together a summary of our findings and suggestions as to how firms can grapple with the ongoing predicament of succession planning. Our information will be uploaded to the chapter website and serve as a resource for all members.

CPA Day at the Capitol is Jan. 20 and is a very important event on our annual calendar. Although it is going to be a tough act to follow the monumental slate of recently enacted legislative changes, our meetings in January will be critical to maintain and deepen our legislative contacts with regard to future legislation that we may seek to promote. Since our profession is regulated by government oversight, only our profession’s members can truly remain the custodians for sound and effective leadership. Please join us in Sacramento to represent all California CPAs. You can register online.

Student mentoring is another essential issue, as the students of today will form the infrastructure of our society of tomorrow. We are giving due consideration to initiating one-on-one mentoring, perhaps in conjunction with the YEP Committee. We had a one-on-one program several years ago, and perhaps the time has come to resurrect this program. If you would be interested in mentoring a student, please let me know.

We have come a long way, but the journey continues. Our destination remains in sight every inch of the way: providing the greatest possible value for our membership. We at the board keep focus on that ultimate goal at all times. On behalf of your chapter board and myself, I wish you and your families the very best of everything for 2010.

This entry was posted on Monday, January 4th, 2010 at 11:55 am 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.