Happy National Women’s History Month! Windham Brannon marks the occasion by spotlighting some of our female leadership. Windham Brannon proudly affirms that 57% of our employee base and more than half of our leadership team is female. We support several different women-based and women-owned organizations including: Commercial Real Estate Women, Women’s Global Leadership Summit, Women in Pensions Network, Accounting & Financial Women’s Alliance, Kate’s Club, American Women’s Society of Certified Public Accountants.
Tax Principal Carlye Dooley shares her perspective below.
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Question: Everyone has a story about how they decided to enter their career field. What made you want to pursue accounting? Did you always know or did you discover it in school?
Carlye Dooley: When I was a child I LOVED playing office. My parents would find and buy for me any garage sale adding machines (had many on my huge executive desk in my room), cheap/on sale banker ledger books or any “old school” store invoice/receipt books that had the purple carbon copy paper in it, and date stamps with ink pads were my childhood toys. I would play for HOURS. Office, school, library….HEAVEN! Forget dolls. Needless to say, I was pretty destined to be in an office position. It was that or teaching. In college, I figured if I started in business and did not like it, I could afford to go back to school and get a teaching degree. I knew that if I started in education, I might not be able to afford to go back and get a business degree. Sad to say, but that was the determining factor. Looking back, I love that I found a firm where I was able to help develop the CPE and training program for the tax department for 15 years! That helped me feed both my love of teaching as well as “do business” for all those years!
How has public accounting evolved since you entered the workforce?
Carlye: When I started there was no internet. Computers were here and there was software but it was not perfect and not always trusted. I still had paper everything and no email. We had to calculate everything by hand and then enter it into the tax software. If it did not match what we calculated, we had to figure out who was right or wrong and many times it was the software. At that point, we had to call the software company and get them to fix the software!
What has helped you get to where you are, and what advice would you share with people who are interested in following a similar path?
Carlye: Many things have helped me get where I am today. The support of great role models along the way, being aware and open to new ways of doing things, sometimes doing things that are really hard for me, scary or uncomfortable (these have been some of the biggest learning moments), and surrounding yourself with people and others that can make you a better person in various ways. I think always trying to do what is best for yourself (and family), your staff, your boss and your company. For someone wanting to follow a similar path, and what has made me happy in my career- I think being dedicated to making Windham Brannon a better place, being positive, and constantly trying to learn and improve is the advice I would share.
To face the future effectively, what are the most critical changes we need to make in the industry?
Carlye: Technology technology technology! Internally and externally. From a client’s view – the client experience and being able to sign documents electronically, not having to run to the post office to mail tax returns on deadlines or tax payments but being able to make them online, sending documents to us and receiving them from us securely and electronically. From Firm Management’s view – what can we automate and cut down on the ever-increasing staff costs as well as increasing efficiencies in other ways with AI. From our staff’s point of view – working remotely, being trained through experience on how to advise clients when so much is going to be automated. CPA firms need to stay pushing technology to make it in the industry going forward.
