In this episode of the SALTovation podcast, we speak with Alicia Gelinas, President & CEO of COCPA. Alicia explores the evolving landscape of the accounting profession, the need for better marketing to young professionals, salary disparities, and the importance of creating supportive professional networks. She also touches on the critical role of advocacy and lifelong learning and offers insights into the systemic challenges and solutions facing the field today. Listen this week as Judy and Alicia discuss the critical role of professional associations like the COCPA in advocating for CPAs and enhancing community engagement among accounting professionals. 

Key Takeaways:

• Career Diversity in Accounting: Alicia’s journey showcases the wide array of opportunities within the accounting profession, from traditional roles in public accounting to leadership positions in professional organizations.
• Importance of Passion: Aligning personal passions with professional work can lead to a more fulfilling career; Alicia’s transition into coaching and subsequent leadership roles highlights this.
• Challenges in the Profession: The accounting profession faces significant challenges, including underrepresentation among young professionals and the need to better market the advantages and opportunities within the field.
• Advocacy and Support: Organizations like COCPA play a crucial role in advocating for CPAs, providing continuous professional development, and fostering a supportive community.
• Systemic Changes Needed: Issues such as competitive compensation, enhancing the profession’s public image, and adapting to new technologies are vital to attracting and retaining talent in the accounting sector.

Quotables

• "The theme that has emerged is that we as accountants, are not great marketers. So we haven't been telling a compelling story about what the profession means.” -Alicia Gelinas
• "Whatever I do, it doesn't matter as long as I turn my passions into my paycheck.” -Alicia Gelinas

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Welcome to SALTovation.

The SALTovation show is a podcast series featuring the leading voices in Salt, where we talk about the issues and strategies to help you make sense of state and local tax. All right, Alicia, thank you so much for your time today and joining us today on the podcast. It's great to have you here.

It's great to be here. Thanks for having me.

And so we always like to start our episodes with a little bit of background. So can you share with us your professional journey as to kind of what led you to transitioning from being a practitioner into leading the cocpa?

Absolutely. I love telling my personal story, and I love hearing stories about cpas because there's no one stories that is exactly the same.

And that's what I really love about the accounting profession. But my story really started back probably earlier than most, but at the age of nine.

And at the age of nine, I was with my sister, who was in the job market.

And back at that time, we used classified ads in newspapers to find jobs, which I imagine that most students today would not even think to open a newspaper to find a job or know.

That newspaper is open. And they're not all just scrolling, they're not just opening.

Exactly. It was paper. It was black and white. It came to your door, and you got it every day. And so there was the whole pages of classified ads.

And my sister was in the job market, so. And I was at her house, and she said, you know, she's quite a bit older than I.

Why don't you just circle every job that has the word accounting in it? Because she was an accounts payable clerk, and she was looking for an accounting job. And so, you know, I was able to read. I would circle them.

Thankfully, accounting is at the first of the classified ads, so I didn't have to go very deep into the paper. But I'm circling the ads that have the words accounting. So, of course, I read what it is and what they do.

And, you know, this one's looking at invoices, and this one's doing journal entries and producing financial statements or a variety of things.

And I thought, that's really interesting, because from a very, very young age, I knew I wanted to do something with money, because I could see in the world around me that money mattered. And it also helped people get out of really tough situations. Money was an emotional thing, not just a physical thing.

And so I knew I wanted to connect to people through money. And when I saw these words of accounting, I'm like, I think that's where it's at. These are people that help people and they deal with money.

So when I got to college, I knew immediately, well, actually high school, I wanted to study accounting, but there wasn't an accounting course. So I just went to the business teacher and said, can you come up with a course for me that studies accounting? And she did.

She provided me with an independent study. And that was really the beginning of my professional journey because I knew I wanted to do it for the long haul.

So I went to the University of Denver to study accounting because I knew they were a great school. Went through my master's program, and like many accounting students, landed my first job in the big four as an auditor, Ernst and Young.

And, you know, so many experiences serving in public accounting and the variety of clients that you get to see was phenomenal. So I was there for nine years, made it to a senior manager role in the audit practice in Denver.

And at that point in the time, you're kind of in your career going, you're always looking, what's the very next step I'm going to take? And do I really want to take it? Right, and so you're considering that. And so the next step was partner.

And I was really questioning, what does it mean to be a partner? Do I want to be a partner? Do I want to be a partner in a big firm? Do I want to be a partner in a small firm? Do I want to go work in an organization?

What about nonprofits? You know, all the world, you know, came to be. And what I realized in that time, I did a lot of journey searching.

And I'm like, whatever I do, it doesn't matter as long as I turn my passions into my paycheck, because I knew that a paycheck's not enough to create a fulfilling career. Like, I need to be passionate about it.

And when I challenged that, I thought, you know, I really want to be in a place where I can advocate for other people, not just be in the business. I want to make sure that I leave my communities better than the way I experienced them the first time. And so that really led me to think.

I think the biggest impact I can make is not within an accounting firm, but for accounting firms, for not for profits and in different worlds.

So I actually changed my career path and stopped accounting and actually went to get my coaching certification because I knew that coaching was going to be an element of my work that I didn't have training in. But I would need to be able to coach businesses, executives, young people all around.

And so I actually got my coaching certification, started my own consulting business, and that kind of led me into different paths of, I worked in nonprofit, I worked for a nonprofit as an assistant controller for a while. I did consulting. All the while.

I was a member of the Colorado Society of CPAs since I was a student in college, all the way through that path, and I knew the value that being involved in an organization like the Colorado Society of CPAs brought to me in my career transitions.

So when the opportunity came up for me to serve as the chief financial officer, actually my first role, I was like, this is absolutely turning my passion into my paycheck. And I loved that role. And in the last two years led me to the opportunity of being able to step into the CEO role.

And now I absolutely don't do daily accounting, but I'm thinking about accounting and the professionals in accounting every single day, and I love being able to be their advocate.

Wow. I did not know that about you.

And I think it's very interesting that you did coaching because we all get coached, and I didn't even know what coaching was. And so that's been something I've been doing for at least five years, maybe longer, but just how much difference it makes in my professional career.

But I feel like coaching is sort of a novel concept. Like, it hasn't been that common for 20 years.

Correct.

Like, maybe for four or five. You're seeing it more, but you're not. It wasn't a common thing. You know, I did a women's leadership program.

There was some kind of women's leadership program that was out there. I don't think they have it anymore, but it wasn't through the society, but it was like its independent entity.

And it was started by some women that are like, women need help, you know, institutional. Institutional meaning employed by a big company just to have support with no matter what your practice area, just going after women in leadership.

So, yeah, and I know the society is doing more of that, as is the AICPA, just rising all levels for all boats. That's interesting. You have that skill.

That's important.

Yeah.

Oh, it's so important. And I think it's critical because I think the entire workforce has changed a little bit in how people grow and develop.

And, you know, it used to kind of be that you had to force people into one training model.

And coaching really is about meeting somebody where they are, not just asking them to be where you are, and so you're helping them take the very next step for them. And it's more personalized. And I really think that kind of coaching mindset is so important.

It's interesting, too, because you may not have that.

It's being used.

Well, you made senior manager, as did I. And I was up for partner, actually, at Deloitte before I left, and they sold my book of business. So I built this huge book of business.

And then, yeah, there's a, there's a big talk in the profession now, and I think there's a lot of factors that have caused these shifts. But what we talk about in the profession now, and I love hearing Barry Blanson from the AICPA talk about it.

And now, you know, these messages are coming around that we're really shifting from a triangle based, you know, accounting firm to what we call, like, more of like the Pentagon, where it's, we can't just take a bunch of young people and then hope they filter out to the top at some point, or they filter out and go out somewhere. We really are thinking about technology is taking over some of those early skills. And so we aren't using entry level people to do some of that work.

There's outsourcing that. We're filling some of that bigger bucket.

And so what that means, though, is that we've got to elevate new professionals to work more in that middle model quicker, sooner, and we need more people in that middle manager spot for a longer period of time to help manage the technology, the outsourcing, some of those entry points. And so it becomes wider in the middle. And so it's more of this, like octagon, you know, kind of pentagon shape.

Because the truth is we just don't have enough people, population wise, to use that kind of triangle model where we just flow a ton of people in and we only then elevate a few.

Yes.

And the other thing is that accounting now serves such a broader landscape of business need than it once did.

And so even the partners at that top can't just be a few experts like the partners actually, that are serving clients have to be skilled in a variety of different areas, and there's no way that one particular professional can have that broad level of deep expertise. So you really do need to think about partnership at a wider level across the plane.

And so I think it really does pull apart the top, but then it pulls apart the middle, and then really what we're seeing is that the bottom is narrowing. So how do people really expedite their learning to what we typically, in our past experience? More at three?

And I like, how long do I need to do it. Yeah. How many busy seasons? How many? Yeah. No, I think it was a failing of, like, you have to conform to this certain role.

And then I think what I felt by the time I left, I mean, I kid you not. Deloitte had 30% attrition. So basically the entire firm turns around in three years. Entire firm.

Maybe they didn't want to go to one place because certainly all of us were getting recruited right, left, and down the middle to leave that you never were sure that people would be getting a better job offer.

Right.

So it is. And then when people leave, why? Right. Because you lose that institutional knowledge. And I think that is tough to retrain, retool, build up.

And I know that's what the big four especially has done, like, bring in smart people, keep training them up because you expect them to leave, you know, and it's sort of your business development as well. But it doesn't always. It is. Right.

I remember at Pw it was like, those people are our clients, your peers are your clients, because they're going to go and run those companies at some point, be the CFO's controllers, whatever. Yeah. So, yeah. And I think that's actually another reason why being a CPA is so amazing.

There's so many things you can do if you can understand the business footprint and money, how money is made, how it's spent.

We have a team member who's on the board of the Texas Society, CPAs.

And that's one of their biggest focuses about, you know, the diminishing in, you know, the diminishing profession, more or less like young people not wanting to be in this profession.

So what are some of those conversations, you know, within the Colorado Society to kind of get people, you know, kind of back into the accounting profession? Cause obviously we all picked it. We are still practicing in various capacities. And so there's that passion there.

But do you have any insights as to maybe why or ideas on how to, quote unquote, fix it? And if you did, you'd be rich and famous, right?

Absolutely. You know, it's been the, I would say the hottest topic in my particular world in the last two years.

And it really heated up, I think, you know, post Covid.

But I think during the middle of COVID we had so many other things on our plate just trying to do that, that we couldn't really pay attention to what was going on around us, you know, so much regulation and things coming out during that time. But it has been one of the hottest topics.

And the AICPA actually created kind of an independent group called the National Pipeline Advisory group about a year ago. And they've spent the last year engaging a variety of stakeholders in a process, including the state societies and our members.

We've created pipeline focus groups, trying to get our members to be involved in surveys, including students doing surveys, all trying to kind of gather, like, what is really the experience going on?

Can we identify some root causes of what, you know, has led us to this point, what's going going on, and then maybe identifying solutions that could help us in the short term and long term get to a better place from a staffing perspective. And some of the work that's come out of that is really, there's some high level themes, and it is not one thing.

And I think that's what's so challenging is you might read the opinion of somebody that, well, this is the one thing. Well, this is the one thing. Well, this is the one thing.

Well, no, it's really a system of things that is working together, and it's a bunch of wheels in motion. And so how do you then think about each of those wheels and the parts that they play and how one then impacts the other?

And so the themes really that have emerged is that, to be honest, us as accountants, we're not great marketers. So we haven't been telling a compelling story about what does the profession mean? What does it look like?

I mean, even from the perspective, you know, Judy, that you just shared with, like, you were an entrepreneur in some ways, even though you're within a large firm of building this big practice and the types of salaries that people can make over their career, we don't typically boast about those kinds of things. We keep that information behind shut doors. And so with this concept of pay transparency, a lot of students don't see the long term benefit.

They only see what's the starting salary. And is that worth the time that I'm going to invest in education to do it?

So I think that there's, we've definitely realized, you know, and we like to tell war stories. We like to tell about the time that we stayed in the audit room until midnight. We did this, and in some ways, we left in the office.

I boarded my dog because I wasn't gonna go home.

And, like, we've learned how to trauma bond. Like, that one time we went through trauma, we became really good friends.

But, like, we don't talk about, like, how cool it was that because I did that, I spent the summer in Africa, you know, and I got to go here and do this. And we just don't talk about that. We talk about, like, the poor experiences we had, which is not a great marketing technique.

Well, I had 32 days of vacation every year I used it. I didn't leave Deloitte with much time in the bank. I mean, I traveled to Europe multiple times.

I mean, I wouldn't take a job in industry because I couldn't just do two weeks of vacation a year. That's only enough time to visit my family. I'm like, I'm not going to do no two weeks.

And I want to be able to take three weeks in a row because you know what? There's redundancy. Because I'm not the only one who does what I do. So my clients will still be served when I leave. And that's huge.

Exactly.

Yeah. Yeah.

So the stories that we've told over time, like, we really have to really, really think about the stories that we're making ourselves, what we're ahead. The story we are making today is the story we have to sell to other people.

And so it's like looking at ourselves saying, am I creating a story that is worth living for me and for somebody else? And then am I telling that story to somebody else? And so I think that's what a really big component.

Obviously, there's a return on investment equation to all of this. And I think salaries in accounting, it is a fact. It's data we can look at.

Over the last six years, they rose about 16%, which we could look at and say, that's great. On the other hand, the consumer price index far exceeded that.

And so accountants in general have lost earnings power over the last six years, whereas other fields like computer information technology, marketing, mathematics, some of those have actually increased at a way higher pace. When I'm sitting there and I've said, I want to go to business, I'm a college grad.

I'm thinking, do I want to become a marketing major where there's no regulation, I can get a higher paid salary. I only have to do four years.

Obviously, the return on investment is going to look really a lot higher for some of these other business degrees than accounting. When I need to take, you know, 150 hours of education, I have to pass a very rigorous exam.

I have to make sure I get accounting experience under a certified CPA, and then I'm only going to make half of what some of my other grads. I mean, it's just not a great business sell. I mean, so really when we think about that, we have to think what really is the value of the CPA.

And I think that the marketplace demands that we have a professional professionalism, that we have a high level of knowledge and expertise, and so we need to make them think about the value of that monetarily so that we can pay people to do the same thing.

And we also haven't been great salespeople in selling our value and saying, look, I'm offering you not just great, you know, compliance, that I'm offering you strategic cost savings over the long haul. And that's an investment you need to be making in these services.

Whether I'm internal or whether I'm an external consultant, you know, it doesn't matter. You need to value the role that accounting can play in your business.

So I think that really from both the marketing standpoint of our profession, the selling of our services then helps us with the HR issue we have and being able to pay people equivalent or more to what some of these other professions are. So there's really along the whole path a variety of issues.

And if demand isn't there, then we do have to relook and say, well, is the barrier to entry too high? Are we expecting too much in the educational and experience in the exam?

Like, you know, if the marketplace doesn't need that, then do we need those kinds of levels? Now I would argue they do. They expect that we sell trust. We don't just sell numbers and trust comes at price.

Yeah, well you know, other thing that concerns me is just the offshoring of different labor costs to get a differential. I mean the differential in cost is like like 50 time different. And I'm not a big fan of that personally.

I will understand the strategic value of that, but I don't like that we offshored manufacturing, we wiped out company towns. I'm not sure that's the best. Why aren't we paying the true cost of things as well, like everybody wants?

I feel like even some of the area, like sales tax is a great example. You have follows returns every month. People sell them for so cheap and the compliance effort is so high that you can't sell it for the same price.

But that's what they do because it makes it easier to sell. But you can't actually physically do it even with technology because it's an automated, it's not an automated system. When you input it to the state.

So there's just this disconnect between ongoing compliance and the actual cost of it. And what we do is we absorb that cost by hiring cheaper labor in other nations.

And I think that's an interesting way to basically not pay, have paid, recognize the true cost.

And if people understood the true cost of some of these issues, then we would have different laws to make the compliance easier, which is, of course, why I'm on this task force, because our legislators don't understand how much more difficult Colorado state filings are than any other state. It's 71 times more expensive to be in compliance in Colorado than any other state. There's a problem with that.

We need to rethink that because it's a voluntary system of filing. All the things. All the things even. I mean, you're publicly held. You're still voluntarily putting yourself into the system. Right.

So, yeah, it doesn't need to be so darn difficult. But, yeah, anyway, it's all very interesting in that regard, too.

It is.

And I think that's the role that I, you know, I think people underestimate the role that they can play as an accounting professional in really thinking through some of those systemic issues in society and how they can actually have a voice in that process.

And I think we met in that process trying to be voices and understanding what's happening at the forefront of the laws before it gets too far down the road that now I'm just having to comply with something that I never had any stakeholder input upfront.

And I think, really, one of the hard parts of our profession is that we have been so buried in just trying to get the work done that sometimes things are happening before we even know they're happening.

Correct.

And so, really, at the Colorado Society of CPAs, one of my key roles is really just trying to make sure that CPAs are in rooms where conversations are being happening now that could then impact what you're trying to implement five years from now. And right now we're trying to undo, I think, from the sales and use tax simplification processes, things that have been in place for a long time.

But how can we avoid some of those things in the long term? And that really is being a stakeholder in those places. Places.

Right.

And that's really why, you know, yeah, we could sit here and complain about the regulatory, or we can do something about it. Right, right.

And it takes time to get it done, but we could get it done good. And then the education and the awareness, I mean, I can't tell you. Many conversations I've had about what is Nexus? I mean, I don't get that.

It's like, that should just be known if you're a business owner, but it's not. So there is a definite challenge with, like, understanding the laws in our nation. So.

And even as an accountant, I mean, I'm a CPA. I was a practicing CPA in an accounting firm. Obviously, I had a focus on audit. I knew enough about tax to be dangerous, but not a lot.

And I remember leaving public accounting and going into my first company where I'm, like, really trying to help them develop their systems of accounting. And I'm like, sales tax? I mean, I think, don't they just bill you and you pay it? Like, what are you? You know? Right. I just didn't.

I didn't even understand it. And so when you dig into some of these things, you're like, wow.

Government really is asking businesses to understand and do a lot just to comply and give them some of the revenue, and you're like, wow. Like, there's just so much put on a business owner. It's too much what they have to understand in a variety of different issues.

And even as a CPA, I didn't understand it 100%. It is a definite challenge.

And I'm learning way more tax than I thought I would ever learn, because I think it's one of those areas that is constantly changing.

I think some of the financial statements, principle based audit regulations, are under scrutiny and change, but they do not change at the same pace as tax.

Yeah.

Yeah, right.

Well, and so, taking just a quick step back, for those who may not be familiar, can you explain the purpose and the mission of the Colorado Society of CPAs?

Absolutely. I love that the Colorado Society of CPAs is really the professional association that covers and supports accounting professionals in Colorado.

And I say accounting professionals. Cause we really have expanded our reach that our core is certified public accountants.

And they obviously are at the, you know, the peak of the certification credential around the accounting professionals. But we understand that CPAs can't fully be supported if the profession around them isn't supported.

And so we are here to support the accounting profession in Colorado. And by support, what I really mean is that we offer support through the entire professional journey.

And that happens primarily in five years, five areas, excuse me.

We make a promise to anybody that chooses to be a member of our organization, that we'll have opportunities for them to develop their career, enhance it, make it more fulfilling, that we'll offer opportunities for meaningful professional connections and developing a professional community where they can relate, learn that will offer valuable discounts and benefits, and serve service in areas that they need, and that will help them engage in lifelong learning and keeping up to date on relevant information to their career. And then we will represent them in places where decisions are made, which we call advocacy.

And so those five areas is where we really promise our members to support them throughout their career.

Attorney and sometimes a professional, you know, really relies more heavily on one of those promises over the other, and then something shifts in their career, and they really need one, a different one more than another. So our, our promise is to be able to support our members in their professional journey.

And we've also recognized that over time, we serve the whole person, not just their professional side.

So, opportunities that we can help them thrive personally because they have these great connections, or they're challenged in certain areas, whether that's connecting with other women or.

We've launched a new series called the see me series, and offering opportunities for people to learn meditation practice to help in their personal experience of their profession. It's just been really cool to watch how we help the individual thrive so that they can thrive in their businesses.

That's funny you say that. So the american bar has noticed this problem as well.

So I'm a CPA and an attorney, and so I went to a conference in Vail, of all places, about that meditation.

And, yeah, it was really funny because they're like, people are falling apart in law because it's super stressful, because you never really have an easy answer. I think being a CPA, you have debited a credit and you might. Hopefully it works out. But we all know it doesn't.

But lawyers by, nobody calls a lawyer if the answer is clear, right? So it's stressful because they're like, it seems like it could be this, but it could be, you know, it's that kind of stuff.

So I think the stress that people are feeling is making them opt out of the career. And there's some of that as well, because you have, you have CEO's saying, I want you to make the books look like this.

They need to reflect it this way. Can we do that? And they're like, okay, I have to rethink that. Is that appropriate? Within gap?

I mean, there's just, there is some pressure, too, when you're publicly held and all the things to report, and there's a tremendous amount of pressure on the accounting team for that. So, yeah, they see the money moving and coming and going.

So, yeah, that's the society is primarily membership based.

And so our members come paid to be a member of the organization, and as a result, have access to a lot of those benefits, have the opportunity to speak into some of the positions that we end up ultimately taking on behalf of the position in different areas. And one of the things that we've noticed back to that shifting, there's not as many people coming into the profession.

A lot of our members now are in those age groups of 40 to 70, which they're more experienced professionals. They are more established in their careers.

And I think that particular age group understands that you do need a support system when you are working in a professional environment. And so I think they really understand the value of, where are my networks? Who do I have in my back, you know, pocket? How do I connect people?

And I think one of our things that we're thinking about at the Colorado Society is, you know, what, what about those 20 to 40s that aren't necessarily in the peak of their career? How do we get them involved? How do we engage them so that they understand the importance of a network?

You know, we haven't necessarily been creating all this support for them.

And so as we think about the future of the profession, how do we get them engaged in what it really means to be a member of something and be supported in community, not just through your professional LinkedIn page.

Right.

Well, and it's the soft skills that are really missing because you learn a task, you get good at it, then, you know, you can teach it to someone else. But then there's so many facets to being an accountant. You know, business operations, business advisory.

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