NABA, Inc. and CAQ Form Strategic Partnership

NABA, Inc. and the Center for Audit Quality (CAQ), a nonpartisan organization serving as the voice of U.S. public company auditors, have formed a programmatic partnership centered on supporting community college students’ successful transition to Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs). The work of the partnership will be managed by NABA, Inc. with a grant from the CAQ in the amount of $1 million over the course of five years. CAQ’s investment will provide for holistic support, including resources to connect students with mentors and tutors bolstering students in their successful progression from two-year to four-year accounting programs.

“HBCUs make up approximately 3% of the institutions of higher education in the United States, yet they graduate nearly 20% of Black professionals. NABA’s current work to build educational pathways that assist Black students in transitioning from high school and community college to HBCUs through articulated agreements is a critical component of building diverse and robust accounting, business, and financial talent pipelines. Our partnership with CAQ better positions us to engage and provide students with wrap around support services that ensure their journey to higher ed is both manageable and successful at scale.” – Guylaine Saint Juste, CEO and President, NABA, Inc.

CAQ’S recent pipeline research indicates that while Black and African American community college students are most open to accounting, these numbers drop dramatically when it comes to selecting an accounting degree over other areas of business.

“While public company audit firms have made progress with regards to diversity, we can and must do more to diversify the talent pipeline. We need to better understand what is driving the fall-off between openness to accounting and, ultimately not pursing the degree, especially for Black community college students who in our research, showed the highest level of interest. We believe there is tremendous opportunity to do more to engage these students,” said Julie Bell Lindsay, Chief Executive Officer, CAQ. “Through this collaboration with NABA, we aim to address current barriers to entry that Black students face when exploring a career in accounting, and to increase the number of Black CPAs within the public company audit profession.”

As part of the partnership, NABA will have access to resources from Accounting+, a multi-year, profession-led, initiative to increase the profession’s diverse talent pipeline and bring awareness to the profession’s progress on diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives.

The CAQ’s member firms Deloitte and CliftonLarsonAllen are also supporters of the NABA program.