Presidents Message

Working on Your Behalf

By Jenny Bolsky

2009 marks an important milestone for CalCPA—its 100th anniversary. In 1909, shortly after inception of the accounting license, the California Society of Certified Public Accountants was launched with just 36 individuals. This year we celebrate our centennial with more than 35,000 members. We are the largest CPA association in California and the largest state CPA society. CalCPA has worked since the beginning to promote and protect the value of the CPA designation on behalf of its members.

Our organization has accomplished a great deal over the past century, and looking forward to the next 100 years, it is clear that great opportunities and challenges await. CalCPA, by way of the governing council, board of directors and staff, has worked hard to develop a strategic plan to support CalCPA’s vision, mission and long-term success. I would like to share with you our strategic priorities:

Advocate for members on issues that affect the profession: Our aim includes shaping legislative and regulatory policy to achieve professional objectives in California (such as reciprocity with other states) and increasing visibility with state and local government officials. We wish to establish CalCPA and its members as leaders who are sought to educate legislators and the public about issues best served by CPA expertise. CalCPA supports a strong licensing and enforcement program in California and provides a means to bridge gaps in California Board of Accountancy resources. It also supports member participation on the board and committees. Our desire is to enhance grass-roots programs and joint ventures with other state societies and national and international organizations with common interests to strengthen the profession.

Enhance and promote the visibility of the profession and CalCPA: We seek to develop and implement strategies to raise awareness of the full spectrum of CPA services, including specializations, as well as enhance CalCPA’s brand with key audiences through targeted campaigns. Such campaigns shall focus on media outreach and membership recruitment and retention. We want to position CalCPA and its members as leaders and build an understanding that CalCPA helps CPAs perform their jobs better and encourage employers to support participation in CalCPA. We are working to enhance CalCPA visibility with students and educators at colleges and universities, build more strategic alliances and create opportunities and tools to increase peer-to-peer promotion of CalCPA.

Attract, educate and support CPAs in their professional and personal development: We intend to be there for CPAs throughout the professional life cycle and to position CalCPA as the place for professional support—technical advice, networking, career building. We wish to build connectivity among members to enable them to leverage their peer networks and expand leadership opportunities and training. We need to support bottom-up mentoring that encourages relationship building across generations and disciplines. Further, we wish to broadly address accounting education needs and issues, expand CalCPA’s focus beyond student scholarships and increase visibility of small CPA firms in campus recruiting.

I hope you will take advantage of the myriad benefits CalCPA offers, and participate in the processes that continue to build and strengthen our organization.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 30th, 2009 at 11:38 am and is filed under Presidents Message. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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