Jackie Brown to Lead Maryland Association of CPAs

Jackie Brown is the new CEO of the Maryland Association of CPAs, succeeding Tom Hood who has taken a new position with the Association of International Certified Professional Accountants. Brown has spent 40 years as part of the MACPA team and has served as its chief operating officer for the past 23 years.

“Through this pandemic, Jackie really kept our team together, kept morale up, cemented a solid leadership team,” said Hood. “Her team is forged in the fire of COVID. You want to talk about a challenge – this challenge is like no other. I was focused on the external market stuff, town halls, the legislative and regulatory area, and Jackie ran the business. We flipped everything to virtual, we increased attendance, we beat our budget. This wasn’t done all at one time – this is work we’ve been doing for five years, and it all came together when it needed to, all under Jackie’s leadership.”

Brown is looking forward to her new position. “What excites me most about my new role is the support I have from an outstanding team at MACPA — staff and volunteers. I never aspired to this role and couldn’t have said “yes” without them, or without the relationships I have with other leaders in the profession, colleagues and friends all over the country.”

“My top priorities are to work alongside our amazing Board of Directors, diverse in every way and leaders in the profession at every level, and leverage their perspectives to continue our rich 120-year history of leading the profession,” said Brown. “Along with this, I will continue to develop our talented team, who are passionate about serving members, and other key stakeholders to do what we’ve always done — Connect, Protect, and Achieve great things and stay Future-Ready. Finally, this year we restructured the MACPA’s Ed Foundation, and now I’ll have a seat on that Board, which is chaired by Kimberly Ellison-Taylor. That work of creating a more diverse, equitable, and inclusive profession is truly ‘bucket filling’ for me.”

A new position is not without its challenges. “The biggest challenge will be working in new ways with our Business Learning Institute (BLI) family. First, we will just plain miss not working everyday with these friends. It wasn’t easy to figure out how to untangle what our whole MACPA / BLI team did to create and support that important work over the last 20 years. But staying Future Ready means our learning will have ‘BLI inside’ so that the unique and essential content continues to benefit Maryland CPAs.”

Brown foresees no staffing changes at the onset of her new post. “Our leadership team will help fill the gaps in my former role, and without BLI, our work to serve members will look different as we begin to reimagine what our Vice Chair Lexy Kessler calls MACPA 3.0.

“I’ve been signing all my emails since March with ‘Stay healthy and hopeful.’ That’s my sincere prayer for all of us in this crazy and uncertain environment. We have a legacy of thought leadership from Maryland that will help us continue to find more certainty and anticipate the opportunities. I’m #MarylandCPAproud of that and especially proud of Tom Hood and our BLI family.”