Anoop Natwar Mehta will serve as the 2022-2023 chair of the American Institute of CPAs, the AICPA announced Wednesday, following a session of its 2022 Spring Council.
Mehta, chief strategist of aerospace firm Analytical Mechanical Associates, was elected to the one-year, volunteer position, and will also serve as chair of the Association of International Certified Professional Accountants, the joint organization from the AICPA and the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants. Mehta
Okorie Ramsey, vice president of Sarbanes-Oxley compliance for Kaiser Foundation Health Plan and Kaiser Foundation Hospitals, was voted in as the AICPA’s vice chair.
Holding both CPA and Chartered Global Management Accountant (CGMA) designations, Mehta said he was first drawn to the profession by his father, a chartered accountant, and a high school teacher who mentored him toward accounting.
“The CPA is a foundation to open doors, broaden horizons and build career journeys,” Mehta said in his acceptance speech. “It was true when I passed the exam in 1991, and it’s just as true now, if not more.”
Mehta went on to list his three main objectives for his term:
- Helping others grow via a "people-first approach that encourages mutual support, lifelong learning and personal development. People should be at the center of our practices and decisions, large and small, the chief focus for where we want the profession to go,” he said.
- Diversifying the pipeline of new accountants, with the profession looking to set and track concrete progress toward DE&I goals. Mehta further promised to visit high schools and colleges to introduce more students to the profession.
- Maintaining trust in the profession. Citing professionals' roles in recent economic recovery and relief efforts, Mehta encouraged professionals to also focus on assurance and advisory work related to environmental, social and governance (ESG) topics, a growing area. “I’ve spent my entire career working with organizations that conduct research on our planet’s natural systems,” Mehta said. “This is one of the places the profession will be looked at in 10, 50 or even 100 years from now as having instilled confidence and consistency in the production of this data.”
Mehta served for the past year as the AICPA’s vice chair and has held other volunteer posts, including roles as a member of the AICPA Board of Directors, the Association of International Certified Professional Accountants Board of Directors, the AICPA Business and Industry Executive Committee, the AICPA Political Action Committee and the AICPA Council. He is a previous chair of the Maryland Association of CPAs and a former board member and past president of the Maryland Space Business Roundtable.
