20 Young Professionals Graduate from MACPA/BLI Leadership Academy

●    Strengths-based leadership: Focusing on your personal strengths, surrounding yourself with team members who have complementary strengths, then delegating effectively so you are spending most of your time on tasks that take advantage of your strengths.

●     Feedback: Receiving feedback well, seeking out feedback, and being able to use it for growth regardless of the way the feedback is given. Learning to receive feedback well also informs how you give feedback to others.

●     Facilitation, collaboration and teamwork: Collecting the best thoughts of every team member through a collaborative “Insights to Action” process that combines personal insights, small-group interaction, and team consensus.

●     Anticipation: Learning to spot future trends early and identify the opportunities those trends offer us.

●     Visioning and execution: Helping one’s leadership team collectively see the same long-term goal and coach their teams to execute seamlessly toward that goal.

“The skills we’re going to need to lead this profession into the future are evolving as we speak,” said Tom Hood, CPA, president and CEO of the Maryland Association of CPAs and the Business Learning Institute. “These young professionals soaked up those skills like a sponge. They’re talented, they’re eager, and they’re ready to lead their organizations and their profession into a changing and complex future.”

“The MACPA-BLI Leadership Academy is now in its ninth year,” MACPA Chair Ray Speciale added, “and it’s one of our top priorities in helping our profession become even more future-ready during this Fourth Industrial Revolution.”

Leading the learning at the 2019 edition of Leadership Academy were three of the Business Learning Institute’s top thought leaders — Hood, Rebekah Brown, and Bill Sheridan. But the learning went far beyond mere presentations and PowerPoint slides.

●     All 20 of the young professionals participated in the “Marshmallow Challenge” — a collaborative group exercise designed to teach the students how to work together to solve big problems.

●     The entire Leadership Academy class was on hand for a special dinner following Day 2. The dinner was held at Cunningham’s in Towson, Md., whose executive chef, Jay Rohfling, won a recent competition on the Food Network show “Chopped.” Rohfling addressed the group and offered some insights about the ties between kitchen management and corporate leadership.

●     Day 3 of the event included insights from some of the profession’s top leaders, including former AICPA Chair Kimberly Ellison-Taylor and Samantha Bowling, a former MACPA chair and recipient of CPA.com’s 2018 Innovative Practitioner Award. The award, presented by the technology arm of the American Institute of CPAs, recognizes innovation in process, services, or technology implementation in public accounting.

Graduates of the 2019 MACPA and BLI Leadership Academy are:

●     Lauren Baker, Maryland Association of CPAs

●     Laura Ballard, Exelon

●     Comora Brock, King, King and Associates

●     Michele Evans, iRF Intelligent RF Solutions

●     Amanda Girton, Wagner & Associates, CPA, LLC

●     Alan Goodwin, Melanson Heath

●     Eli Hernandez, Bridgeway Community Church

●     Carrie Karn, Hildebrand Limparis & Associates

●     Naji Lakkis, DeLeon and Stang

●     Philip LaRosa, WithumSmith + Brown

●     Blaine McGrath, Cohen & Company

●     Chuk Onuaku, KPMG LLP

●     Brian Richards, Hildebrand, Limparis and Associates

●     Deborah Saneman, Kelly Payroll

●     Matthew Sawyer, Melanson Heath

●     Lisa Seemann, Orlo Management

●     Jared Sorber, Bridgeway Community Church

●     Chris Stang, DeLeon and Stang

●     Jennifer Stevens, Maryland Association of CPAs

●     Matthew Young, WithumSmith+Brown, PC