By Jeffrey R. Hoops

On June 1 I assumed the role of president of this great Society. What an incredible honor and responsibility. As I said at the 106th Annual Dinner last month, I intend to use this year to serve a profession that has given so much to me. I won’t let you down.

Our Society owes a great debt of gratitude to immediate past President Jo Ann Golden. Leading a 30,000-member organization is a challenge in any year, but doing so in these tumultuous times is doubly difficult. I long ago lost track of the number of meetings we have had with legislators and regulators where we tried to be a positive voice for meaningful and effective accounting profession reform. Jo Ann and our Executive Director Lou Grumet were real leaders in this endeavor. Thanks for your efforts. I hope they bear fruit this year.

In my view, one of the most significant accomplishments of last year was the adoption of a strategic plan. This plan, which had significant member input, provides a framework for all of our activities and programs.

In the plan we established a core purpose: “To represent the membership and contribute to their success, while maintaining the public trust in our members and the CPA profession.” We also set out an overall goal of “creating such value to its members that all New York CPAs want to become active members.”

The plan sets out three-to-five-year goals in three areas:

1. Professional Competency: NYSSCPA members will have access to resources to realize their full potential as competent, educated, ethical and trusted professionals.
2. Advocacy: The professional interests of our members will be promoted by the NYSSCPA in pursuit of the interests of the profession and the public.
3. Recognition and Visibility: The value and contribution of CPAs will be universally recognized.

We are committed to achieving these goals. The volunteers in our committees and chapters are shaping their efforts to achieve our goals. Our budgeting process also has been redesigned so that all of you will be able to more easily see how your dues are working to achieve these objectives.

In the next few months I plan to devote this column to a progress report on some of our goals. I’d like to start with our Recognition and Visibility initiative and in particular our efforts to recruit more people from minority and underprivileged groups into our profession.

Did you know that if you look at the four largest cities in New York state, more than 70 percent of the public school students are black, Hispanic or from some other minority group? In these schools, the minority has become the majority. Many of these students come from underprivileged families.

I’m sure you know that the demand for accounting graduates continues to be strong. Studies of job opportunities show this, and finding good staff is one of the challenges that I always hear about from our members as I travel throughout the state. We have an obligation to redouble our efforts to attract people from minority groups and underprivileged backgrounds into our profession. We need the people, and they need the opportunity. This can be a win-win situation.

What an incredible opportunity. In a time when our profession’s image has suffered, we can be viewed as providing terrific career opportunities for honest, young, ambitious men and women no matter where they stand on the socioeconomic ladder. I can think of few better ways to increase our recognition and visibility.

The irony is that our profession has a long history of attracting people from lower socioeconomic backgrounds and providing them with opportunities for advancement. I’ve heard stories about many CPAs who grew up without much money, went to public colleges and then achieved great success in our profession. I believe the accounting profession is the ultimate meritocracy. We hire college graduates and provide them with great training. Advancement and success is solely a function of their ability to get the job done.

The Society is helping on this front and plans to do more. We have a program called Career Opportunities in the Accounting Profession that provides high school students in the summer of their junior year with an introduction to our profession and a college experience at the same time. We have COAP programs at Long Island University, Hofstra University, Westchester Community College and Pace University. This year we are expanding the program to Le Moyne College in Syracuse. We have also been working with the Academy of Finance, a national organization that helps to provide meaningful business education to high school students.

These programs work. Several of our COAP students have gone on to major in accounting and are now beginning their careers in our profession.

At the college level, I would like to see us do more to support accounting programs at public colleges like CUNY and SUNY that often attract students who can’t afford to go elsewhere.

Soon, I plan to appoint a task force to review, coordinate and improve our numerous recruiting activities. We need your help. Please consider supporting these programs in your community. When you are hiring new accountants, please consider sources like CUNY and SUNY. If you want help, let us know. If you have ideas on how we can do more, please let us know that too.

Jeffrey R. Hoops
president@nysscpa.org