Cartoon Accounting

Two fairies mockingly point at a puff of smoke as the word “Nickelodeon” explodes in an eruption of orange. Their mouths open wide in huge guffaws and their eyes squint shut with laughter as magic wands await their next hysterical prank.

These characters, Cosmo and Wanda from Nickelodeon’s cartoon “The Fairly OddParents,” and the network’s signature orange blob, grace the front of Marcy Withington’s business card. As vice president of finance for Nickelodeon and its sister channels, Withington sees a lot of things at work that most CPAs would never encounter outside of their child’s bedroom. In her job, “SpongeBob SquarePants” and “Dora the Explorer” are standard topics of conversation.

The fun of working for such a youthful company is not lost on Withington, who says walking into the MTV Networks building, where MTV films “Total Request Live” every day in front of screaming teenage fans, is always exciting. But she also admits that her job is demanding and she’s worked really hard to get there. Without having pursued a CPA license, Withington probably wouldn’t be doing financial planning for such a major corporation. She is just one of many examples of CPAs who have walked a unique career path, starting with just a CPA license and an interest in business.

Having been an economics major at Middlebury College, a liberal arts college in Vermont known more for its authors than its accountants, Withington barely had a sense of what an accountant really does. After working at a Japanese bank, she wanted a little more direction in her career and decided to go to Cornell Business School. There an inspiring professor who was a CPA encouraged her to get her CPA license, which led her to work for a Big Four firm in Boston.

She began her accounting career when PricewaterhouseCoopers was still Coopers and Lybrand. Doing standard business assurance for Coopers was like “accounting boot camp,” Withington said.

“I still feel that there’s an incredible value in working for a Big Four accounting firm. To feel out the industry and see as much as possible early in your career I think is really valuable,” Withington said of her experience with Coopers. “Working for a company immediately can be limiting.”

Although she liked the analysis work with numbers at Coopers, Withington soon learned that audit was not a niche of accounting she wanted to continue. Still, she transitioned and wound up working for CBS’ corporate audit group, marking the beginning of her career as a CPA in the entertainment industry. In what Withington called a “fun transition,” her new position was a lot more operational in nature. Her work for CBS eventually led to the financial planning position she’s in now for Nickelodeon when CBS and Viacom merged in 2000, the year she transferred to MTV Networks.

Now planning the financial future for cartoons and games, Withington admits that the basic accounting skills that launched her career probably make up only ten percent of her job at Nickelodeon, but they’re the most important ten percent.

“I don’t use accounting every day anymore, but when I do use it, it’s so valuable. And I find that I really look for those skills in other people in hiring, ” she said.

In her experience, “People who have gone through the whole CPA thing show that they’re committed to understanding the numbers and that they have those building blocks and fundamentals.”

Withington also emphasizes the importance of having a well-rounded education so you will be just as confident writing a memo as you are crunching some numbers.

As she watches the network’s consumer products business top 2.2 billion dollars, Withington reflects on how exciting it is “to be part of an organization where businesspeople like me partner with some of the greatest creative minds in entertainment.”

When she received her diplomas from Middlebury College and Cornell University, Withington probably had no idea where they would land her.

“When you’re in school, you really can’t see the big picture,” she said. But standing proudly beside a totem pole of television sets broadcasting Nickelodeon’s latest hits, Marcy Withington’s picture seems to have come into focus.