40 Under 40 Honoree: Tracy Gaspardo Mortenson, CPA, JD– 35

Education – BS Accounting, Univ. Illinois; JD, Georgetown
Univ.
Family – Husband Michael; sons Lucas 4, Mitchell 3.
Hobbies & Interests – Painting, tennis, reading/writing,
traveling, chasing mischievous toddlers, lamenting over the Cubs.

What peers, clients and friends say about Tracy:
Tracy’s previous experience as both a tax attorney and senior tax consultant
at a big accounting firm provide her with the perfect insight into customer’s
needs because she was one. She understands the workflow of her customers and
strives to help them reach greater levels of efficiency and productivity. This
perspective, combined with her natural enthusiasm and intellect make her a charismatic
and innovative leader who has led various new product and product enhancements
ideas that will benefit professionals.

What technology or business process does Tracy see affecting the tax
and accounting profession in the next five years?
“From a publishing perspective, we see the next five years as a journey
towards deeper integration, increased customization and greater automation.
The old publishing models are being turned on their heads. Rather than developing
discrete packages of information and then offering those packages to our customers,
our customers are now kicking off the development process and dictating what
type of content they need and what form they need it in. In the relatively near
future, I believe automatic online retrieval systems based on current web-crawling
technology will work behind the scenes to do computation and research tasks
performed manually today thereby freeing the accountant up to focus on higher
value tasks.”