Outstanding CPA in Chapter Service Award
This award recognizes NYSSCPA chapter CPA members who have distinguished themselves as chapter leaders through model service within their chapter, the Society and the profession. The award celebrates those who have demonstrated outstanding dedication to, and have made a remarkable impact upon, their Society chapter, through endeavors such as inspirational service in leadership positions; the development of future leaders of the chapter, the Society and the profession; educational efforts; public service; and other activities in their chapter.
Valerie Imondi recently served as president of the NYSSCPA’s Mid Hudson Chapter, where she has been very active for several years, especially in the chapter’s NextGen Committee. While serving on that committee, she recruited several new members to join and participate in committee activities. Imondi also became involved in community service. She has hosted the chapter’s very successful annual Toys for Tots fundraiser and volunteered for the Newburgh Urban Farm and Food Initiative, a nonprofit organization in the Hudson Valley that assisted with Newburgh’s emergency food response during the COVID-19 pandemic. In tribute to her service to the committee, and the community, she was honored with the 2024 Outstanding CPA in Chapter Service Award.
Noelle Collazo, a past co-chair of the chapter’s NextGen Committee, who nominated Imondi for the award, wrote in her nomination letter that Imondi “was an active member since day one. … Valerie brought fresh ideas and motivated the other members to get involved. She was solely responsible for bringing all the new members that joined NextGen over the next several years.”
“Valerie is passionate about the profession and passionate about getting younger people involved,” said Tracy L. Badgley, also a past president of the Mid Hudson Chapter, who has known Imondi for 10 years.
Collazo called Imondi “a one-of-a-kind individual,” adding, “She loves getting to know people she works with, people on her committees, colleagues, and, in general, anyone she meets. … She enjoys sharing her experiences with others and hopes they can learn and take away something to help them succeed in their endeavors. She places a significant emphasis on the importance of giving back to her community and making sure her colleagues feel welcomed. … She gets the team to join the NextGen Committee so they can gain these skills to move up in their careers and give back to the community.”
Imondi’s grandfather was neither an accountant nor a businessman, but he knew what was right for his granddaughter. As she approached her final year at Washingtonville High School in Orange County, Imondi felt the need to choose a career path when she considered what to study in college. Her grandfather suggested accounting.
It turned out to be good advice and the right choice. She is now a director at PKF O’Connor Davies LLP in one of its two Newburgh offices, working with clients in the manufacturing and commercial industries, as well as in private, family-owned businesses, providing accounting, tax preparation and estate planning services.
Imondi and accounting were a good match from the start. She enrolled at SUNY Albany, earning her undergraduate degree in accounting before going straight into the school’s master’s degree program in taxation because, as she said, “I like the research part of it.”
“I’m a numbers person, but that’s not what my interest is,” she said. “I like reading tax law [and] being able to play around with the law a little bit and say, ‘we can interpret this [in] multiple ways.’ So, my master’s in tax introduced me to that part of it. I would say that’s probably what I like most about the whole thing.”
Right after graduation, she was hired as a tax associate at PwC. After seven years, she decamped for a three-year stint at a small firm, before landing at PKF as a business solutions senior manager. She was promoted to director at the beginning of this year.
Shortly after joining the firm, Imondi was given life-changing advice by another senior manager, Michelle S. O’Reilly: Get involved with the NYSSCPA and join the NextGen Committee, which aims to educate, connect and grow membership within the CPA profession.
“I didn’t know about the Society before I joined PKF,” she said. “A lot of where I was working prior was not in the Hudson Valley. I was in Manhattan for years, and then I was in New Jersey, so I wasn’t really exposed to this when I started at PKF. The partners and my mentors advised me to join. They said it would be a great opportunity to network, meet people your age, and connect with the community. And so I joined instantly.”
“People were excited to go to meetings,” she said. “People were excited to do the events. People had ideas. We did a lot of things outside of work, with happy hours and volunteer events. People looked forward to these events when I first joined.”
Since serving as co-chair of the chapter’s NextGen Committee, Imondi has organized its annual December Toys for Tots fundraiser—she schedules drop-off locations at local businesses; hosts, plans and coordinates the event; and schedules the set-up with the U.S. Marines to pick up the toys.
Badgley noted that last November, Imondi resurrected the chapter’s Banker, Attorney and CPA Networking Event, which had not been held since 2019, due to the pandemic. She was instrumental in recruiting Daniel “Rudy” Ruettiger, from the award-winning film Rudy, as the evening’s celebrity speaker.
“She worked tirelessly” on the event, which drew about 150 attendees, said Badgley. “It was her baby, and she did a great job.”
Imondi has also visited local colleges and high schools to share her professional and college experience, using the opportunity to introduce the Society’s Career Opportunities in the Accounting Profession (COAP) program. “I would say that was probably the most rewarding and, I think, the most satisfying part of being on the NextGen Committee,” she said.
Imondi is currently working with a local college on implementing an official mentor program, through which each junior and senior accounting major will be assigned a direct mentor. She elaborated, saying, “We are working with the college to create the first-ever college chapter where [students] can start to get involved with the Society at the college level. So it is more than just a mentoring program, but a way for the students to see how the Society works and give them that experience prior to graduating and entering the work force.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, PKF nominated Imondi to participate in Orange County’s Leadership Orange Program, a 12-month program to recruit and train diverse leaders to identify and meet community needs. “It’s a leadership class for the entire county,” she said.
She is also a member of PKF’s two-year Future Leader Program, a requirement to make partner. It teaches aspirants skills such as working with different personality types, bringing in new business, and managing at a higher level.
“It’s a little more involved than Leadership Orange was,” she said.
All of these experiences informed Imondi’s views on mentoring, in which she professes to be “a really big believer.”
Mentorship, she said, comes in two different ways: a formal mentor that might be assigned, and the informal ones that an individual chooses along the way. To Imondi, the latter is just as, if not more, important.
“So, as you move up in your career, you may even confide more in those informal
mentors than your actual assigned mentor,” she said. “At PKF and within the NextGen Committee, one huge thing is mentoring this next group.”
Imondi formally mentors three people at her firm but said, “I would like to think that I informally mentor everybody. I hope all the managers and partners feel that way.” It’s the same mindset with the NextGen Committee; despite all the local competing firms in the area, the competition is set aside, when it comes to mentoring.
But her advocacy for seeking out informal mentors comes with a caveat: One must be selective “because not everyone has your best interest and not everybody understands your path,” she said. “Just because your path doesn’t mirror what they’re used to doesn’t mean that it’s not a good path [for you].”
“Valerie truly cares about the individuals and wants to make sure they are happy and have a positive mental state,” said Collazo. “She provides the resources to her staff by making sure they are properly trained, have people they can learn from and lean on, and overall are happy at the office. Professionally and personally, she is a great resource and a positive role model.”
ssteinhardt@nysscpa.org