CalCPA Chair Andrea Cope Finds Recipe for Success
Andrea Cope’s wide breadth of work experience ranges from accounting for the stars to cooking at the Ritz. She’s also been extremely active in CalCPA leadership. Read more about her and what she hopes to achieve as chair.
By Damien B.M. English
Andrea Cope is a familiar name to many CalCPA members. After all, she’s a CalCPA Board and Council member, a past president of the San Francisco Chapter and has served on various statewide and chapter committees. But even those who think they know her well may be surprised to learn that the 2009–10 CalCPA chair has:
- Been to culinary school.
- Fired herself.
- Signed Don Henley’s will.
- A life-long dream to own a ranch and raise goats. That’s right, goats.
And that is only the tip of the iceberg.
From Animal Science to Accounting
The daughter of an Army man, Cope’s early life was marked with travel. A few years after being born in Alexandria, Va., Cope and her family briefly settled in Wyoming before landing in San Marino, near Pasadena. “It was a great place to grow up—small town, 15,000 people and 450 homes,” says Cope, 51.
She left San Marino following high school graduation for the University of California, Davis, where she remained for three years. Accounting, though, wasn’t on her career radar. “I was going to be a veterinarian,” she says. “I had a lot of fun there. In my third year, my Dad suggested maybe an animal science degree wasn’t going to get me very far in this world.”
That’s when accounting came up as a possibility. Her dad’s best friend was his CPA: Pete Sutterson of Sutterson and Co. in Encino. “Dad highly respected Pete and the whole accounting profession,” Cope recalls.
Plus, she had a best friend in high school, Regina Ebert, whose mom, Nella Ebert was a CPA. “She was a stay-at-home mom, but she had her own business,” says Cope. “I thought that was so cool. You can just imagine how thrilled I was in 2007 when Nella was honored as a trailblazer of the profession at CalCPA’s first Women’s Leadership Forum.”
So, she gave Dad’s advice a shot and took an accounting class. “I finally got an A,” Cope says. “It was my destiny.”
Cope eventually transferred to Sacramento State, which had a better-known accounting program than the one at Davis; graduated in 1981 with a accounting degree; and landed her first job with Windes & McClaughry in Long Beach.
“That was my introduction to CalCPA,” she says. “I was working in one of the cubes by the door and Paul Southgate, a partner, had the office across from me. We developed a good relationship and he brought me to my first CalCPA meeting.”
Over the course of the next dozen years, Cope worked for various firms, including spending nearly seven years at a firm that worked with many restaurants.
However, rather than stay at a Santa Barbara-based firm and continue on the partner track, Cope decided it was time for a change and moved to Houston, where she spent six months doing contract work with the Houston Symphony as its controller.
“I had dear friends there. My brother and sister went to Texas A&M, so I had been there a million times for various reasons. I loved the place,” she says. “But, I got homesick. Family and friends were still in California and I missed them all too much. I enjoyed the work at the Houston Symphony, but once the CFO and I reorganized the department I realized that I missed the variety and challenge of public accounting. I also realized that my opportunity to move up in the organization was dependent on the CFO leaving and that was fairly unlikely to happen anytime soon.”
So it was back to Southern California, where she landed a job in Los Angeles with one of her former client’s businesses, Kaufman and Eisenberg, a business management firm for high net worth movie stars and executives.
Highlights of this part of her career include signing Don Henley’s will as a witness, which landed her a thank you notice on one of his albums; and meeting agent and movie producer Jay Kanter’s wife, Judy, who was a bridesmaid for Grace Kelly.
Slicing and Dicing
While engaged in interesting work, Cope started to burn out.
“At the time, I was working for a known business manager in the industry, who enjoyed being the sole owner of the firm he started,” she says. “Since he wasn’t ready to have a partner, I needed to figure out what my next career step would be. I didn’t just want to jump into another business management firm. I also lived about an hour from the office driving in LA traffic. That, coupled with my employer’s decision and managing some interesting personalities, I just needed a change.”
So, Cope traded in her tax guides for cookbooks, and enrolled in an 18-month program at the California Culinary Academy in San Francisco. “I had always wanted to learn to cook professionally and it just seemed to be the perfect time to take a sabbatical, develop the more creative side of my brain and learn how to create great food,” she said.
Following the program, she took her culinary talents to the Ritz Carlton in Laguna Niguel, where she stayed for six months.
“I turned 40 in the kitchen,” says Cope. “I took a step back and thought, ‘I’m earning eight bucks an hour, working six days a week, 12 hours a day and I’m never going to be able to retire.’ I happened to have a CalCPA magazine at home. I opened it up and saw a big ad for Burr Pilger & Mayer.”
She had never heard of the firm until then, but it was looking for a manager to assist clients in the day-to-day operations of their businesses—and the firm had many restaurant clients. Bells went off in her head. She applied for the position and was hired. After catching up with the multitude of FASB statements issued while she was honing her kitchen skills, she made partner in 2001, three years after coming aboard at BPM.
She hadn’t hung up her chef’s hat just yet, though. When Cope began at BPM, she had a business called Two Chefs Catering with her boyfriend at the time. “We would shop on Wednesdays and Thursdays, start prep on Thursdays, I would come home on Friday and we’d cook until midnight and cater our events at the weekend,” she says. “We made money, since I understood the economics of the business. We kept our food costs to 35 percent and labor costs to 5 percent. But, after about two years of that I fired myself. It got to be too much effort. I cook for family and friends now and people are more than happy to come over for dinner.”
She says the major similarities between the two professions are the deadlines, ensuring the processes are efficient and, of course, the long hours.
“But the pay is much higher in accounting,” says Cope. “This profession opens up so many doors for women. The CPA license gives you that added credibility you need to show the world you are just as qualified as a man. When I started 20 years ago, there were some real biases against women. It’s changed a lot—but as a profession we still have lots of room for continued improvement.”
A Little Bit Country
Cope is in BPM’s client accounting services group, part of its larger consulting practice group, with an emphasis on working with high net worth individuals. Many of her clients have real estate investments, which have become a heavy focus for her. She also has a smattering of mom-and-pop, retail and service type industries she works with.
Cope has lived in Alameda since 1996, in a California bungalow built in 1920 that she says is “perfect for a single gal.” The architecture and style of her home dovetails into another passion of hers: arts and crafts from late 1800s to 1920 (Gustav Stickley, Frank Lloyd Wright and other designers from that period).
She’s most proud of her 60-inch-round, Gustav Stickley signed, oak table and chairs. “I could have 30 people around that thing if I had enough chairs.”
When asked what the future holds, Cope mentions her lifelong goal of owning a ranch close to a big city where she can raise goats and make goat cheese. She hopes to have this achieved by the time she is 60. “I love wide open spaces,” she says. “My dream ranch marries some of the veterinary sciences I learned with the cooking.”
Cope admits to being a cowgirl at heart, and loves country western music. “I also love dance,” she says. “My boyfriend and I are taking dance lessons right now.”
She’s also an avid reader, going through a book a week, and loves to travel, with Italy at the top of her list of places to visit. She traveled there once with a group of foodies that started in Naples and ate their way down the boot.
Words of Wisdom
Looking back on her career, Cope has some advice for young CPAs. Her first suggestion is to concentrate on getting the CPA Exam out
of the way. “It will be an albatross on your shoulders until you do,” she says.
“Also, look for a firm you feel you can grow with,” she says. “Don’t always concentrate on the salary. The money part is just one aspect. If you’re happy somewhere, you’ll probably do better and have bonuses come your way.”
She also suggests getting a mentor—one of each gender for both perspectives. “And get involved in a professional association,” she adds. “It helps develop leadership skills outside of work that you can bring back into your firm. And, learn how to give a firm handshake.”
CalCPA Chair and Centennial
Cope stepped up her involvement with CalCPA in 2001 when Bill Schulte, a director on CalCPA’s San Francisco Chapter’s board, retired and asked Cope to take his spot. She did and she hasn’t looked back. Cope says she is “stoked” to be chair during CalCPA’s Centennial.
“I think I bring the possibility of what you can do and achieve if you stretch yourself and volunteer for leadership positions in CalCPA or your firm or company,” she says about being chair. “I’m also the changing face of the accounting profession: young, female and in a senior management role. I bring a fun can-do attitude to my position.”
Cope says CalCPA has given her the opportunity to develop her leadership skills.
“I can stand before a group of 200 people with butterflies on the inside, but coming across looking relatively calm,” says Cope. “It’s offered me the opportunity to think on my feet and show students/candidate members how passionate I am about this career and profession and transfer that enthusiasm. I have met some great people, and have made great friends up and down the state. I get so much energy from CalCPA, which you don’t always get from the daily grind of work. I come back pumped.”
Damien B.M. English is CalCPA’s managing editor.
