At 37, Questian Telka sat across from a male colleague who asked her something she’ll never forget: “How does it feel to be a woman and be past your prime?”
She looked him dead in the eye. “Past my prime? I haven’t even gotten close to hitting my prime yet.”
Seven years later, on her 44th birthday, the day this episode of She Counts aired, Questian’s confidence proved prophetic. Her experience, revenue, and boundaries are thriving like never before. As she puts it with perfect accounting humor, “I know in accounting, assets depreciate with age, but I prefer to think of myself as an asset whose value compounds over time.”
Welcome to a special birthday episode of She Counts, the real-talk podcast where hosts Nancy McClelland, CPA, and Questian Telka, EA, tackle heavy topics like imposter syndrome, glass ceilings, sexual harassment, burnout, and pricing disparities. But they also know their community needs something lighter. Tax season is brutal, politics are exhausting, and everyone is tired.
So they crowdsourced stories from women across the profession with one simple prompt: “You know you’re a woman in accounting when…”
The responses poured in, and they range from hilarious to infuriating. But they’re all relatable. These are funny stories to share over drinks, but also proof that the absurd experiences uniting women in this profession aren’t anomalies. They’re the norm. And when we finally start talking about them, we realize we’re not alone. In fact, we never were, and laughter might just be our best survival tool.
Conference Survival: A Full-Contact Sport
If you want to understand what it’s really like being a woman in accounting, skip the spreadsheets. Watch us pack for a conference.
Questian calls herself a “minimalist,” which made Nancy burst out laughing. “I love that you think of yourself as a minimalist,” Nancy said, remembering the first time she visited Questian’s hotel room at their very first conference together, the Bookkeeping Buds retreat. “There was stuff everywhere. There’s literally no physical space in this room that does not have something of yours on it.”
Questian’s conference arsenal includes a clothing steamer and multiple shoe options (conference shoes, dinner shoes, and, especially in Las Vegas, dancing shoes). She has a full makeup setup and safety pins. “Inevitably, somebody at the conference is like, ‘I need X, Y, Z.’ And I’m like, ‘I have it. What do you need?'” she explains. “I have safety pins. I come prepared.”
Nancy operates differently. Severe back issues mean she refuses to carry more than a carry-on. Her solution is a handwritten chart mapping every conference day, every event, every outfit, and every pair of shoes, all strategically planned for maximum reuse. “I am obsessed with having absolutely everything I need and not one thing more,” she says.
Except costumes. Nancy always packs costumes.
She has a piñata costume, which she wore in a photo with Leslie Odom Jr., who “did not say a word about it. He just smiled.” She also has a watermelon costume and an aerobics costume for leading conference rooms through “She Works Hard for the Money.” As she puts it, “Costumes are the one exception.”
The shoe situation deserves its own category. Lynda Artesani brings an entire extra suitcase filled with just shoes. Her conference bestie Matthew Fulton carries it for her. “Yep, that’s me. That’s my job. That’s why they call me the conference husband,” Matthew jokes.
Then there’s the survival kit problem. Conference rooms are either arctic or tropical, with no middle ground. Nancy brings handmade ponchos from her best friend, a fiber artist. Questian brings pashminas. In fact, it’s a good idea to have both a pashmina scarf AND a battery-operated fan in your conference bag. Because venue temperature control is, as the hosts put it, “unhinged.”
Despite the need for survival gear, conferences are where magic happens in the most unexpected places. Questian met her romantic partner in the Starbucks line at an accounting conference. Nancy met Misty Megia, founder of Theatre of Public Speaking, when Doug Sleeter literally dragged her down a hallway to join a secret flash mob that would “interrupt” the opening keynote, which Misty actually choreographed herself.
Ellen Oliver nailed what matters most when she said, “You know you’re a woman in accounting when you finally get to meet your internet friends in real life.”
These conference moments create the connective tissue of a community that might only see each other a few times a year. But the real gymnastics happen when you try to schedule your actual life around the profession’s demands.
When the Universe Ignores Your Busy Season Calendar
Questian’s first son was due on Christmas Day. Perfect timing, she thought, not for the holiday, but for the tax benefit. “Who wouldn’t?” she laughs. Plus, as an EA who doesn’t do taxes, her busiest month is January with 1099s, year-end closes, and grant reporting. A December baby would’ve been ideal.
The baby had other plans. He arrived two weeks late, smack in the middle of January chaos. “I was really annoyed,” Questian admits. Fortunately, January’s birthstone is garnet, which is her favorite. She had a ring made to commemorate it.
Not everyone gets thwarted by nature. Dr. Jackie Meyer, CPA, planned both her children’s births before busy season, and it worked. When people asked if she was timing it for the tax deduction, she said no. She was timing it so she could be in the office during tax season. Robina Bennion pulled off the same feat. When her grandmother warned, “You can’t plan your whole life,” Robina shot back, “Oh yeah, grandma, watch me.”
Then there’s Jean Zick, who walked to work nine months pregnant in a late-90s blizzard because wires had to be faxed. A client needed something, so she went. Nancy’s response captures what we’re all thinking: “Thank goodness for today’s remote workforce.”
The emotional toll runs deeper than logistics. Every January, Questian says, “I want to quit accounting.” She’s joking, but she’s also not. “I eventually get over it, but every year I’m like, I need to change careers.”
Nancy shared a meme that rewrites the old rhyme about days in months. “30 days hath September, April, June, and November. All the rest have 31, except for January, which has 426,913.” If you’ve lived through January in accounting, you know that number might be low.
The hosts voiced something every woman in the profession has felt when they said, “You’ve cried over something that had nothing to do with accounting. But it was definitely about accounting.” That breakdown over a spilled coffee during 1099 season? Yeah, that wasn’t about the coffee.
Some stories make you laugh until you realize they shouldn’t be funny at all.
The Absurd, The Infuriating, and The Too Real
Gail Perry, editor-in-chief of CPA Practice Advisor, shared a story that starts unbelievably and gets worse. She was her firm’s multi-state tax expert. A client came in with multi-state issues. She was the obvious choice for the meeting. Except the client insisted on working with a man.
The firm’s solution was to set up a physical screen in the conference room. Gail sat behind it, hidden, listening and taking notes while feeding information to a male colleague who pretended to have her expertise. They joked she was the Wizard of Oz behind the curtain. “At the time, we just thought he was a jerk,” Gail said. Nancy and Questian insist they “would have said no.”
The wardrobe calculations alone could fill a spreadsheet. One listener pointed out the mental drain of deciding what to wear. Is this too tight? Too casual? Will this invite the wrong attention? Questian added that a male colleague recently observed how much time women spend getting “presentation ready.” That’s time men use to actually advance their careers. “This was a man saying this to me,” she noted.
Another listener treats clothing as armor and calls her quarter-zip her protection for meetings with clients who try to look at her chest. She even has a custom field in her CRM to tag problem clients, like men who’ve leered or made passes. “You cannot make this stuff up,” Nancy said.
Another submission was blunt: “You know you’re a woman in accounting when your client texts you late at night trying to sleep with you.”
Not every story stings. Dawn Slokan was at her daughter’s dance competition, convinced she kept seeing ads for Avalara, the tax software. Why would a tax company sponsor a dance event? Turns out it was a skincare brand. Her brain just couldn’t leave work at work.
The takeout metrics tell their own story. Terr Saracino’s local restaurants know it’s tax season by the volume of orders alone. Nancy’s favorite pizza place once taped two plastic containers to her delivery box. Inside each was a shot of tequila. “They knew it was us and they knew it was tax season.”
The conversation shifted when they addressed their most-requested topic: menopause and perimenopause. Nancy went through early menopause around 40. Her doctor dismissed it, saying, “You’re too young” and put her on birth control instead.
Questian shared that most doctors receive about one month of (optional) menopause training. For something affecting over half the population!
Building Community Through Shared Experience
The hosts introduced Shawn Simmons, Nancy’s best friend since college and a professor of communication design at Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design. At 54, after eight years navigating her own health journey with limited support, Shawn is using her sabbatical to research how design and fiber arts can help women find community around menopause.
“I had trouble finding people to talk to about it,” Shawn explained. “I didn’t have a lot of resources. So I decided to use graphic design and art to help people like me find a community and be able to talk about their experiences.”
She created a survey asking women 16 and older where they currently find support and where they wish they could. Shawn’s research revealed the awareness gap. When she called about hormone replacement therapy options, the women at both her insurance and pharmaceutical companies didn’t know what HRT was.
These Stories Aren’t Bugs. They’re Features
The episode makes crystal clear these are shared experiences. The woman next to you at the conference, behind the screen feeding answers, in the Starbucks line, or whose pizza place knows her tequila preference has her own version of your story.
When we speak these stories out loud, they transform from private frustrations into collective evidence that this profession still has work to do. But more importantly, they prove women in accounting have been doing that work all along with humor, creativity, and an impressive collection of conference survival gear.
The hosts ended with a quote from Betty White that captures the spirit perfectly. “It’s your outlook on life that counts. If you take yourself lightly and don’t take yourself too seriously, pretty soon you can find the humor in our everyday lives. And sometimes it can be a lifesaver.”
In accounting, humor is standard equipment. Right there with the pashmina and the battery-powered fan.
Listen to the full episode of She Counts, then head to the She Counts LinkedIn page to share your own “You know you’re a woman in accounting when…” moment. You’re not the only one. You never were. And now we have the stories to prove it.