Follow the Leader
These CPA Standouts Have What it Takes–Do You?
Loni Ang–The Sister You Never Had
Loni Ang wants to be a member of your family.
She wants to help your grandmother, plan your future and make sure your kids are raised right.
“I’m a partner in a wealth management team that provides families and business owners a financial plan that addresses all areas of their financial management,” explains Ang, a financial adviser for Citigroup Smith Barney.
Ang began her career at Ernst & Young, LLP as a consultant providing assurance, advisory and information technology consulting services for Fortune 500 companies. Prior to joining Citigroup Smith Barney, she held corporate finance management positions at the Walt Disney Company and Beckman Coulter, Inc. While at Citigroup Smith Barney, Ang earned her MBA at the University of Southern California and, armed with a CPA license and advanced degree, she decided to steer her career in a new direction.
“I moved to the financial advisory side of the profession,” Ang reflects. “It complements my personal goal, which is to help people. What we do touches peoples’ lives. It’s very personal and it’s very valuable and meaningful.”
Ang says her job requires her to become an extension of her clients’ families. “We know everything about them, because when they come to us, we ask very personal questions to get the information we need to better serve them: what their goals are, what they want for their kids, how they want to raise them, etc. We get to grow with them as well, and see their lives change and help them adjust to the change.”
One client stands out for Ang: the client’s assets were distributed all over the world, and Ang helped her bring more than 30 accounts under one roof—on one sheet of paper.
“Unfortunately, she passed away, right when we were in the process of developing her estate plan,” says Ang. “Now, I’m helping my client’s family in a different manner: helping to get their deceased mother’s finances in order. When it’s all said and done, we’re going to be involved with a couple generations of my client’s family.
“We really want to do that, get into households,” she continues. “We are involved in helping parents educate their children financially, so they aren’t just handing over a blank check to their kids. The parents want their kids to understand how to manage that money since, ultimately, the kids will be the ones taking care of them at some point.”
Her career, and work with families, has been rewarding for Ang, who is accomplishing her goals of “helping people, and being able to make a difference in their lives” every day. Ang also serves as a financial literacy volunteer for CalCPA, which takes her into classrooms to teach kids how to manage money.
“It’s a no-brainer to start your career as a CPA, because the background introduces you to so many opportunities when you may not know exactly what you want to do,” says Ang. “Every situation is an opportunity: leap into it.”
James Gellas–The Business World is His Oyster
James Gellas, who just turned 30, is president and CEO of his own company—and he’s standing on the cusp of a career change.
“They say the average person changes careers seven times in their life,” he says. “I never expected that, in the middle of my 20s, I’d have made a career change already, from accounting to human resources. Now, as I look to change careers again, and go into investment banking, I’m finding that my accounting background and CPA license is well respected and continues to open doors for me.”
The power of the CPA license is not lost on Gellas, who started his own recruiting firm a year ago in Los Angeles in response to the huge demand for accounting professionals in the marketplace. “I serve as a high-level matchmaker between candidates who are looking for the right opportunity and companies that are looking for qualified accountants,” he explains.
His early work as a CPA introduced him to all sorts of people and gave him insight into various businesses—and that’s what appealed to him most.
“My clients ranged from a one-man shop, exporting beef out of the basement of his house, up to a multibillion-
dollar international company,” he says. “Depending on the size of the company you’re working with, you really get the chance to see things from a different perspective. I was helping one guy essentially run his entire business; whereas, for the larger companies, I’m there more as an adviser and helping prepare financial statements.”
Gellas comes away from each job with experience and working knowledge of almost every aspect of a business, big and small. This firsthand insight exponentially expands his career possibilities.
“I emphatically recommend becoming a CPA,” he says. “It sets a great foundation for a future in business, even if you decide you ultimately don’t want to go into accounting. It’s a dynamic profession—more so than people think. People still have this impression of bean counters and the green eyeshades, but it’s not like that at all. There’s no question that
earning the CPA was challenging, time consuming and costly. However, I can confidently say that already it has paid for itself several times over.”
John Samore III–Taking Down a Kingpin
Did you know the San Fernando Valley was the home of a criminal dubbed he “Godfather of Toner”? Neither did John Samore III until he played his part in bringing the toner-touting criminal to justice.
“For many years, while I was going through undergrad at USC, I wanted to be a police officer; all I wanted to do was work for the highway patrol,” says Samore, who even served as an explorer with the California Highway Patrol. “I did ride-alongs and thought, ‘What a job. You have the freedom of the road, aiding and assisting motorists. It really is a giving-back type of profession.’”
In the end, though, rather than sign on with the CHP, Samore followed in his father’s footsteps and joined the CPA profession. But his opportunity to help the long arm of the law hasn’t been lost.
Samore met a former FBI agent who was making a move to KPMG. “When he got there, I called him and we hit it off so well I ended up getting a job with KPMG in the forensic and fraud field,” says Samore. “It was like being a special agent for the FBI without the gun and the badge, and doing the same type of work, but on the civil side, not the criminal side.”
Companies called on Samore to investigate allegations of fraud or mismanagement. The job led to some very interesting experiences for Samore, one of them culminating in the eventual bust of the godfather of toner.
Samore was called to investigate a clerk who was suspected of doctoring records and embezzling money from a San Jose medical center. It turned out to be an extortion case that started with the clerk trying to save money by taking up an offer faxed into the office. “She would buy office supplies at the great prices offered by the fax, and we’re talking Post-it notes, and the sellers would then send her a thank-you gift for purchasing from them, like a color TV,” explains Samore. “So now they have her hooked. Next it was toner cartridges. It started off with two cartridges, then it was 10 and ultimately we found a warehouse of purchased toner cartridges.”
The seller had basically told the clerk by threatening to tell her boss about the gifts she accepted. So, to keep buying and prevent her boss finding out, she doctored records.
“It turned into a criminal matter and we started working with the FBI, who began surveilling the company,” says Samore. “It turned out, unbeknownst to us, they had been looking for the person behind this scheme, who was apparently the godfather of toner fraud in the San Fernando Valley.
“We ended up searching her house and finding the ‘gifts’ and went to her office early in the morning, before she arrived, to go through the books and records. When she got to the office and saw all the people, she frantically took off, called her husband and threatened to commit suicide. It was a very, very interesting engagement for an accountant to encounter. It wasn’t your traditional financial statement fraud,” he says.
Today, Samore is a manager with True Partners Consulting, a firm founded by former Andersen personnel. He’s also starting his own business, a stock alert service called GrowYourRetirement.com. Samore also speaks to students at schools and universities about diverse career paths for those with a degree in accounting. He participates in leadership programs with CalCPA and is an avid softball player. “I keep busy.”
This wide range of experience gives Samore nothing but positive things to say about his business. “I believe in the profession,” he says. “Being a CPA will take you anywhere you want to go.”
Chris Davis–Super Sleuth
CPA and forensic accountant Chris Davis doesn’t leap over buildings in a single bound, but she is a modern-day corporate crime fighter. She gathers evidence that explains why audits failed and how corporations ignored the accounting rules––conditions that usually result in massive investor losses.
Her more than two years of forensic investigation helped settle a widely publicized case involving Sunbeam Corp. and its auditors, in which the allegations included violations of federal securities laws and professional gross negligence.
Davis, who has testified as an expert witness, is a director in the litigation consulting and forensic accounting group of Hemming Morse, a San Francisco-based CPA firm with several offices in California.
“It’s investigative work, retracing what happened and what went wrong, and communicating our findings to the trier of fact,” she says. “I like it because we constantly refer to the standards of the accounting profession. I’m able to keep in touch with what I should know.”
It is only fitting that one of Davis’ heroes is Sherron Watkins, the Enron executive and former outside auditor who blew the whistle on the energy trading company after she discovered financial irregularities.
“She was very brave and stood up for what she believed and what she thought was right against very powerful individuals,” Davis says.
Davis is the mother of two teen-aged daughters, one an elite tennis player who trains six hours a day and plans to turn pro, the other, a talented artist. Her husband is the tennis player’s full-time coach and trainer.
Born in the Philippines, Davis came to live in the United States after high school with her mother and younger brother, who is also an accountant.
If Davis were a superhero, she says she would be Buffy the Vampire Slayer: “She appears small and apparently harmless, but turns out to have very strong convictions and amazing strength—always saves the day. She is a modern-day superhero.”
Takes one to know one.
Ken McGuire–Never a Dull Moment
CPA Ken McGuire packs a pistol. No, he’s not a renegade; he’s among the 5 percent of FBI agents who are CPAs. McGuire says the FBI actively recruits CPAs because they need agents who understand finance and the world of white-collar crime.
Life is never dull as an FBI agent. “I usually have a to-do list when I come to work,” muses McGuire. “But there are numerous days in which I have to throw away my plans and execute a search warrant or go out on surveillance.”
McGuire has investigated the theft of drugs and money by Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department detectives who were part of a narcotics squad, as well as a major aerospace company that bilked the government for work on a satellite system.
Cybercrime is where McGuire constantly finds himself tracking down the bad guys. He’s been on the trail of computer hackers who’ve tried to manipulate the stock market and who’ve sabotaged corporate computer systems.
“I used to tell company executives that the chance of getting hacked was the same as being hit by lightening, but now I tell them their days are numbered,” he says. “They have to know that they are going to get hacked by an insider or an outsider, and they have got to be prepared for a catastrophic situation.”
Although he carries a .40 caliber Glock pistol, McGuire seldom uses it other than for training. “Fortunately, I haven’t been in a shootout, but there have been a couple of ‘guns drawn’ situations, where a gun was pointed at me,” he says. “One time the pucker factor was high was when we were executing a search warrant. After we announced our presence and opened the door of his apartment, the crook pointed a gun 18 inches from my head. Fortunately, we talked him down.”
That he’s a CPA often startles the people he’s investigating, McGuire says. “They just see me as an FBI agent, like on television. Someone who chases crooks and arrests them. But when it comes to going over questionable business transactions, I often get told that the issues are probably too complex for me to understand. Once I’ve explained to them that I’m a certified public accountant and I can recognize smoke and mirrors when I see them, it quickly dawns on them that the jig is up.”
Cheryl Cruz–Accounting is the Foundation
The career of CPA Cheryl Cruz is nothing short of impressive. She’s been a legislative aid to Massachusetts Rep. Royal Bolling Jr.; a special assistant to New York Sen. H. Carl McCall; a law clerk for the Attorney General of California, the California Court of Appeals and the SEC; a real estate developer; and a tax supervisor for Coopers & Lybrand—just to name a few.
But the apex of her career, she says, is working with students as an accounting educator. “Whether it’s helping them with the subject matter, or finding the career path that’s right for them, or expanding their résumés to land that first job, I love being a mentor,” says Cruz.
Cruz is associate dean of undergraduate studies at California State University, Los Angeles. There, among other things, she reviews curriculum across all of the university’s disciplines, encompassing six colleges and more than 50 departments and programs. Cruz began at Cal State LA in 1990 as a lecturer, quickly rising to professor and, later, chair of the department of accounting.
To what does she owe her success? “My father always told me, without a good foundation, the building crumbles. And accounting is the foundation upon which all other business disciplines stand,” Cruz says. “Any part of a business—whether it’s finance, management or marketing—can’t do anything until accountants provide the numbers.”
Cruz holds a bachelor’s degree in retail marketing from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst; an MBA in finance from Northeastern University in Boston; a J.D. from UCLA Law School; and a master’s in business taxation from the University of Southern California.
But after all those degrees and job titles, her career has come full circle, back to the halls of a school building. And she couldn’t be happier. “It’s a very rewarding career,” she says.
Myra McCaskill–In the Groove
What could be more perfect? Growing up in Los Angeles, CPA Myra McCaskill had “R&B for breakfast, lunch and dinner,” she says. Her father, Eric McCaskill, was a music producer for Sussex Record Company.
So, after a post-college tour with a big accounting firm, McCaskill returned to her music-industry roots. A marketing planner at Geffen Interscope Records, she is building a career that perfectly combines her talents and interests.
“As marketing planner, I’m responsible for determining all of the marketing costs for each of our artists,” McCaskill says. “I have to make sure that we’re making smart decisions,” weighing the costs of everything from hiring an artist’s stylist to funding a music video.
The relaxed but intense corporate culture of a music label allows McCaskill several perks. “It’s a
fast-paced environment, but it’s very casual,” she says. “Since our primary product is music, we get to play our music really loud in the office and watch all of our artist’s videos.”
What’s more, McCaskill often finds herself rubbing shoulders with recording artists and other celebrities until the wee hours of the night at album release listening parties and similar industry events.
“Working in the music culture means we start late,” she says, adding that her typical workday begins about 9:30 a.m. “There are a lot of artist showcases and parties during the week and people at Geffen go to those events to support artists and the business.”
McCaskill, a former chapter president of the National Association of Black Accountants, also has a keen sense of community. “Giving back to the community is critical,” says McCaskill, who is also on the board of the Accounting Careers Awareness Program and part of a real estate investment club. She also is a CalCPA Board member.
And she has her CPA license to thank for this dream job. “Getting my foundation within accounting has been really beneficial to my career,” she says. “If you have that accounting skill set, you can venture off into so many different areas.”
