The 2022 MP Elite

August 2, 2022 9:00 AM

While the events of the last few years pushed many CPA firms out of their comfort zones, the 2022 Managing Partner Elite had marched their practices out to the leading edge of the profession many years prior. Case in point: Many of this year’s class of exceptional firm leaders implemented remote working environments long before the pandemic closed down offices, giving their people a headstart on operating in this new normal — and as an added benefit, it helps their firms attract more flexibility-focused talent, from outside their regions, as the Great Resignation continues to thin candidate ranks.

All of the 2022 MP Elite have not only been successful in courting new professionals, but in retaining them as well, as these leaders never stop adding or improving people-first policies and programs that center what they recognize as their firms’ most valuable resource.

And this year’s honorees have had time to strategize and develop these initiatives, because to be eligible for the MP Elite, candidates must have been in their leadership role for a minimum of four years.

Another theme of the 2022 class is a proactive pivot into more advisory services. While some of the younger or smaller practices on our list were advisory-focused from inception, legacy practices have impressively embraced this client need for more holistic business management services.

Additionally, the MP Elite are leading their practices — and the profession — into emerging new markets like cannabis, environmental, social and governance services, and cryptocurrency, to name a few.

Grassi CEO and MP Louis Grassi, who returns to our list after last being honored in 2014 (candidates are eligible for repeat consideration after three years) summed up the gusto with which he and his fellow honorees approach conquering these new frontiers.

“I swim against the tide,” he said. “When other managing partners react to crises and uncertainty with caution or fear, I am typically the one taking a big step of faith and implementing innovative new ways to continue our firm’s growth.”

And growth is not a nebulous concept for the MP Elite. Most of these outstanding leaders set very precise goals for their practices, down to the year and revenue dollar amount — and all of them are, as you’d imagine, ambitious.

The MP Elite’s standards for themselves are just as high.

As Centri Business Consulting’s Michael Aiello put it, “As a leader, my growth never stops. Whether it is learning more about how to lead or expanding my industry knowledge of our business or our clients’ business, I remain focused on being the best version of myself for the company and for our clients.”

That constant pace of change drives all of this year’s leaders — long before the pandemic, markets or other factors forced their lagging peers to catch up.

The MP Elite understand disruption and evolution is a key factor of their success.

“I am not afraid to shake things up or change the mold,” said Brown Schultz Sheridan & Fritz’s Ken Wolfe. “Sometimes, we just have to try something different, and it might work or it might not. But we will never progress forward if we don’t have change.”

Embodying that progressive mindset, we are proud to present the 2022 MP Elite, who continue to lead the charge ahead.

Growth goals

Aiello-Michael-Centri Business Consulting

Michael Aiello / Centri Business Consulting
CEO and managing partner since 2011

When Michael Aiello founded Centri Business Consulting in 2011, he had a very intentional strategy for a practice he envisioned to operate as full business advisors for clients through their entire growth cycles. “We want them to grow and succeed in the future, as we've experienced as a firm,” he said, noting that Philadelphia-based Centri has grown to $25 million in revenue and 134 employees, with year-over-year growth of 85% in 2021 alone. And the ambitions don’t stop there for Aiello: “We want to reach the $100 million revenue mark in the next five years, if not sooner. That growth will allow us to reinvest in our future team and its success.”

Helping the firm in that trajectory is a spate of new service offerings that came directly from what clients were demanding and includes outsourced accounting as well as advisory services in the very hot areas of ESG, IT/cyber, SPACs, fairness and solvency opinions, CFO, and human resources. Centri has also grown its staff 50% every year for the past three years, and the firm’s competitive compensation and benefits aim to continue that streak. The firm also offers unique perks like “Disconnect Days” and “Focus Tuesdays,” along with traditional benefits packages and tuition reimbursement. For the past five years, Aiello and his team have brought a greater focus to building a multigenerational firm to actively develop the next crop of leadership.

Restructuring for success

Investment and analysis

Pamela Baker / Barbacane, Thornton & Co.
Managing partner since 2018; joined in 1988

The strongest leaders recognize the need to identify the next great one to follow in their footsteps, but for Pamela Baker that search went beyond just her successor as MP at Wilmington, Delaware-based Barbacane, Thornton & Co. In her first year as managing partner, Baker and her team conducted an in-depth search for a new (non-CPA) CEO to provide a fresh business perspective alongside Baker (and her successor when she retires in 2025), who can focus on honing her strong client and technical skills on a smaller book of business. The firm is still defining the roles in this progressive structure, which should position the firm to continue the steady revenue growth Baker has overseen.

From the start, Baker has taken a pragmatic approach to the firm’s 22 staff and leaders, making the kinds of tough decisions emblematic of an elite MP. “When I became managing partner, we had a longstanding underperforming partner and a new, young partner,” she recounted. “It was crucial that I start my tenure making the difficult decision to exit the underperforming partner. That move set us on the path of innovating for the future, and since that time I have successfully mentored in two additional partners.”

Baker’s mentorship is firmwide in her semiannual one-on-ones with staff and her solicitation of their feedback, which has led to improved employee benefits, more transparency around firm decisions, and the consideration of adding new niche services. To enhance professional engagement and development, especially coming out of the pandemic, the firm also requires all staff to come into the office one day per month to focus on training, development and other nonclient activities.

Investment and analysis

Joseph Damiano / Sax
CEO and managing partner since 2015; joined in 1995

Strategic analysis is the hallmark of any great CPA firm leader — both as a key part of client service and as applied to internal revenue and operational goals. But Joseph Damiano and his team at Parsippany, New Jersey-based Sax also drill down into the firm’s leadership pipeline, conducting an annual SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) analysis of the firm’s needs and identifying the next leaders to fulfill them. The firm’s mandatory retirement age and partner scorecards for senior managers help streamline this important process and have aided Sax in promoting 16 partners in the last five years and bringing in six from other firms.

The firm equally invests in technology, and very mindfully — as Sax evolved its remote culture to meet the challenges of the last few years, it invested in an intranet platform and completely revamped all its technology policies and procedures to be more secure, while also enhancing internal security training programs in an effort to protect the firm and its 218 employees. The firm’s overall strategic plan is also an ongoing process, with Damiano and his team revisiting it every three years. This year’s plan was just completed and includes the goal of being a Top 50 firm by 2026 with $150 million in revenue.

Damiano recognizes Sax’s people play a key role in this plan, and created a series of performance review, wellness and mentorship programs to boost employee engagement — which the firm regularly measures in employee surveys and stay interviews.

Damiano has also overseen the launch of some highly in-demand new services, including Sax Capital Advisors in 2021, a transaction advisory practice in 2020, and a cannabis and cryptocurrency practice last year — all spearheaded by the innovation committee he formed.

Her own ‘new normal’

Avani Desai / Schellman
CEO since 2021; MP/president since 2018

Plenty of people across the profession are wondering what the next “new normal” will be, but Avani Desai and Florida-based Schellman are working to create their own, rather than waiting for anyone else’s.

She’s doing this in a host of ways, from programs like SchellmanCares, which elicits innovative ideas from the firm’s 463 employees (and rewards them handsomely), and SchellmanX, which is helping boost the pipeline of students into the profession through a months-long program of classroom work and job shadowing, to positioning her firm as one of the pioneers of the accounting profession’s new relationship with private equity.

While Schellman is heavily focused on technology — it focuses on IT compliance attestation services like SOC audits and cybersecurity — Desai is an outspoken proponent of accounting’s human side, regularly advocating for smarter, better and more individualized treatment of everyone working in the profession.

“I think it’s important to provide your employees with a genuine opportunity to nurture a career, and these days, that doesn’t just mean providing a cookie-cutter career track where advancement just means higher pay,” she explained, recommending that firm leaders adhere to “the idea of sustaining the highest return on job value for each team member … throughout their tenure.”

That idea may not be normal everywhere, but it’s certainly paying dividends at Schellman, which has cut its attrition rate almost in half during Desai’s tenure, made several appearances on Accounting Today’s Best Firms to Work For list — and climbed up almost 25 spots on our Top 100 Firms ranking.

Against the tide

Louis Grassi / Grassi
Founder, CEO and managing partner since 1980

Louis Grassi is only the third firm leader to make a repeat appearance in the MP Elite, but then, as he noted, he likes to swim against the tide, and the years since he first graced the list in 2014 have only proved that.

Take his reaction to COVID: “As other firms were downsizing and implementing hiring freezes and budget restrictions, I strategically chose to move forward with launching new services areas, hiring new talent, and investing in major marketing and technology initiatives,” he explained. “Increasing our talent, resources and market presence helped us not only continue to grow stronger throughout the pandemic, but also allowed us to help our clients do the same.”

Over the four decades since he founded his eponymous New York-based firm, Grassi didn’t just swim against the tide, though — he has also consistently been ahead of the curve, pioneering innovative management practices, service offerings and technologies long before many of his peers, and reaping the benefits of early adoption of everything from telecommuting and the paperless office, to actively seeking employee feedback and communicating clear paths to partnership for staff.

And he’s still at it, pushing his firm forward into advisory services — and new markets. “Our business consulting and private client services will grow exponentially, as our role as trusted advisors and our focus on personalized service continue to hold the most value to business owners and high-net-worth clients,” he said. “At the same time, we will become leaders in areas that were traditionally dominated by larger firms, such as public company services, which we are already offering and expanding.”

Empowering others

Glenn Harper / Harper & Co. CPAs Plus
Managing partner since 1997; joined in 1989

Since Glenn Harper and his Ohio-based firm made the decision five years ago to shift to advisory services and placing a heavier focus on advising and consulting with entrepreneurs, “Instead of adding staff, our focus has been on how to put the right people in the right roles to achieve the revenue and profit growth we wanted.” Getting that fit right for each of his 15 employees has resulted in the firm experiencing literally 0% turnover since 2017.

And getting that strategic shift right depended on Harper doing something few firm leaders are comfortable with: letting someone else drive. He and his practice manager, Julie Smith, drafted the strategic plan on the back of a Southwest Airlines napkin in midflight. “When we returned to the office,” he explained, “I empowered her to implement the vision we had created, which meant I had to get out of my own way and trust her implicitly to execute significant change.” (Smith later won an Innovative Practitioner of the Year Award from CPA.com.)

Harper has even carried that willingness to boost others into a new innovation called EmpowerCPA, which aims to teach other firm leaders how to achieve the operational excellence that allowed him to grow his firm over 200% in just the last two years. “I’m looking to turn some of my attention to helping other firm owners learn how to … create advisory firms that make a measurable difference in the lives of the clients they serve,” he said. “I want to help others in my position get better, do better, and enjoy leadership in public accounting.”

Ownership opportunities

Steven E Gross

Joshua Lance / Lance CPA Group
Managing director since 2015

Lance CPA Group was not only fully virtual before the pandemic, but since 2015 the Chicago-based firm has established itself as a tech-forward practice that earned a place as one of Accounting Today’s 2021 Best Firms for Technology. But that’s far from the only innovation Joshua Lance has implemented in his seven years at the helm. He created an employee ownership model with the goal of Lance CPA Group being fully employee owned by 2032, eschewing the traditional corporate ladder to give each of the firm’s 18 staff a real stake in its success.

In the meantime, employees choose their own schedules and don’t work more than 40 hours a week or on weekends during tax season; they also participate in a profit-sharing plan where 20% of the firm's profits are contributed annually. And while being fully remote makes it easier for the firm to hire and retain the best and brightest, Lance does recognize the need for in-person team-building, flying everyone to a retreat twice a year for this essential bonding time.

Lance CPA’s retention efforts are also bolstered by the opportunity for staff to advise their highly niched clientele — craft beverage and digital agency companies — and their cloud-based service offerings, which beyond accounting and tax include technology implementation, a people advisory service added in 2020, and plans for a low-code, no-code technology practice to be established in the next three years.

Challenging the expected

Barlow Productions

Robert Minkler / Anders
Managing partner since 2010; joined in 1996

Calling himself a technologist at heart, Robert Minkler jokes that he often serves as the help desk rep in meetings. “I believe that technology curiosity and support is what continues to fuel the firm’s vision of using technology not just to run the business, but to help grow the business and drive strategic growth,” he explained, while emphasizing that he’s not interested in tech for tech’s sake. “Using a logical, technology-driven leadership approach, I prepare the firm for new opportunities and challenges, while still prioritizing a commitment to focused client service.”

It’s all about using technology in support of vision — whether it’s deploying data analytics to bolster recruiting and retention, investing in digital marketing and a robust CRM system, or constantly refining their tech stack to support the long roster of new advisory offerings the 335-person firm has rolled out since 2020, including business analytics, talent, and outsourced accounting and CFO services. Minkler expects those advisory services to expand to the point where they represent the largest group in the firm.

“The vision of the firm is to challenge ourselves to always embrace our entrepreneurial spirit, spearhead change and be the advisory firm of choice,” he said. “To me, that means challenging the expected and always doing what’s right, not what’s easy.”

That aversion to the easy and the expected helps explain why the firm has relied almost entirely on organic growth and remained firmly rooted to a single office in St. Louis, even as many other firms have chased after growth through regional expansion, but it’s also driven by Minkler’s commitment to the local community — and it certainly hasn’t prevented Anders from growing fourfold in terms of staff and revenues on his watch, and both becoming a Top 100 Firm and appearing multiple times on Accounting Today’s Best Firms to Work For list.

Long-term vision

David Nissen / PKF Mueller
CEO since 2005; joined in 1980

Like any exceptional leader, David Nissen has a vision — ⁠and he updates it for PKF Mueller every five years. The Illinois firm is currently operating under its 2024 vision statement, which set ambitious revenue and geographic expansion benchmarks, along with HR and technology goals. The firm has hit many of its growth plans throughout Nissen’s 17-year tenure, increasing revenue 375%, adding two offices, acquiring three firms, and adding six practice areas and five new niches. He also joined with a separate but related firm to form business process and outsourced accounting Mueller dotKonnect, for which he also serves as CEO.

But the firm is already hard at work on its 2029 vision plan, to be unveiled this summer. Along the way, Nissen welcomes input from his 300 employees through monthly meetings to discuss initiatives, revenue growth, process improvements and more, while maintaining the “family feeling” he characterizes the firm as having since its 1968 inception. He does this with everything from quarterly breakfasts for all new employees to sending personalized birthday cards to staff. But Nissen is not too internally focused to ignore other important sources of inspiration for how PKF Mueller can continue to improve. He regularly visits other CPA firms to exchange best practices: “This learning through sharing has been invaluable to me in my career and has helped me to become a better leader.”

Staying flexible

Ken Wolfe / Brown Schultz Sheridan & Fritz
President and managing principal since 2005; joined in 1991

Being able to make proactive long-term plans while also being able to change on a dime are core skill sets for firm leaders these days, and Brown Schultz Sheridan & Fritz’s Ken Wolfe manages to do all both at once.

“We have a formalized strategic plan process dating back to 2008 and most years have a multi-year plan,” he explained. “But over the last few years, we have done a one-year plan because of the rapid changes of the COVID-19 environment.”

“Just because we've done something the same for years, does not mean we have to keep doing it that way,” he continued, a belief that’s proved by everything from the Pennsylvania-based firm’s “Workplace by Design” model that lets staff build their own schedules and its regular introduction of new service lines, to its strong commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion, both internally and for the accounting profession as a whole.

Being flexible and nimble doesn’t mean having no fixed poles, however, and for Wolfe, one of those is the firm’s culture. In 2018, he recalled, “I realized that, while we did have a great culture at BSSF, it was an unspoken culture. If you asked our 100 team members at the time to describe our mission or core values, you would have received 100 different answers.” So he led the firm on a year-long journey of team surveys, interviews and collaborative meetings “to identify why we exist, what we do and how we behave as a firm.” The resulting mission statement helped guide Wolfe’s firm through the depths of the COVID pandemic — and goes a long way to explaining why it has been named a Best Firm to Work For more than 10 times.