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What Women in Accounting Gain From Conferences Has Little to Do With CPE Credits

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Picture standing in a crowded expo hall, trying to reach a single vendor booth, but you can’t make it more than a few steps without someone pulling you into a hug. The problem gets so bad that a colleague appoints himself your personal handler, physically steering you through the crowd like a celebrity bodyguard.

That’s what conferences become when you’ve invested in relationships over the years, and it’s exactly what happened to Nancy McClelland at a recent conference when Tony Proctor had to escort her through the expo hall. On the other end of the spectrum, her She Counts podcast co-host Questian Telka once attended Intuit Connect with the goal of walking up to just one person and introducing herself without having a panic attack.

In their latest episode, Nancy and Questian dig into why professional conferences matter so much more than the CPE credits they offer, especially for women in accounting, tax, and bookkeeping. They’re even taking their own advice. She Counts recorded live at WAVESeattle this year, moderated by conference organizer Erin Pohan.

Why Conferences Matter Beyond the CPE Credits

Yes, you can earn CPE credits online. Yes, conferences are expensive. And yes, if you’re an introvert who works happily from home for days without seeing another human, the idea of walking into a ballroom full of strangers might sound terrifying.

But as Questian puts it, CPE is just “the baseline reason to be there.” Nancy earns more than double her required CPE every year, so that’s not why she keeps going back to conference after conference.

For Questian, an admitted introvert who can work alone for days, conferences offer conversations with people who truly understand what she’s all about. “It’s not like when you’re talking to your spouse or significant other, your family member, where it just completely goes over their head,” she explains.

Nancy frames the conference experience through a story from a favorite childhood book, Hail, Hail Camp Timberwood by Ellen Conford. A girl arrives at summer camp feeling completely out of place while everyone else runs around hugging old friends. Then a stranger runs up and hugs her – confiding, “Look, I know we don’t know each other. It’s okay. I was just feeling so left out.” The two start hugging other lost-looking kids, and soon the entire camp is connected.

“Conferences kind of remind me of that,” Nancy says. “I can’t necessarily promise somebody’s going to run up and hug you and pretend like they’re a long lost friend, but it’s a little bit like that.”

These relationships are professionally transformative. Questian met nonprofit expert Greg Bossen at her second Intuit Connect simply by walking up and saying, “Hi, I work with nonprofits. I heard you work with nonprofits.” She had no idea who he was. It still took her five minutes to work up the nerve. That conversation turned into shared clients, co-teaching opportunities, and an ongoing professional partnership.

Nancy met Katie Helle through a community post about the Digital CPA conference. Katie is now helping Nancy navigate her first season with ProConnect Tax. “You’ll meet people you’ll be friends with forever,” she says.

Why Women Need These Spaces Even More

Nancy believes strongly that building these relationships is “two, three, ten, twenty times more important for women than men.”

For women in accounting, conferences offer personal validation and visibility. You can watch another woman take the stage and think, ”I could do that too.”

“Confidence gets built in real time,” Nancy explains. “We get visible, we take up space. We imagine bigger possibilities for ourselves when we see other women.”

The relationships you build become your safety net when life gets complicated. When you’ve invested in real conference relationships, you have people to call when everything falls apart. That’s something a webinar simply can’t deliver.

Questian’s favorite conference moment captures this perfectly. At WAVE-Seattle last year, Jen Posner mentioned listening to a podcast by two women in accounting on her drive up. “Is it called She Counts?” Questian asked. It was. “That’s my and Nancy’s podcast.” Early in the show’s life, that moment proved their work was reaching people in meaningful ways.

Choosing the Right Conference for Your Goals

“The best conference isn’t universal,” Nancy emphasizes. What works brilliantly for one person might leave another feeling completely out of place.

Before registering for anything, ask yourself what you’re actually looking for:

  • Technical learning? Deep dives on tax approaches or software implementation
  • Networking? Meeting potential collaborators and referral partners
  • Inspiration? Keynotes that help you dream bigger
  • Visibility? Opportunities to speak and take up space
  • Tool discovery? Hands-on software evaluation in expo halls
  • Community connection? Women-focused events or niche gatherings

Nancy once sent her senior accountant to a conference with one mission: find the best project management software for their team. That trip led them to Double (formerly Keeper), which Nancy calls “transformational” for their organization.

Size and Format Matter

Not every conference needs to be massive. Local pop-ups and touring events offer accessible starting points. Erin created WAVE-Seattle because she was tired of traveling around the country and wanted something for women in the Pacific Northwest. Jason Staats takes his On Firms events on tour. The Bridging the Gap Road Show and Advisory Amplified travel city to city, offering lower-cost options.

For larger conferences, each has its own personality:

  • Scaling New Heights: Heavy on accounting technology with a massive expo hall
  • Intuit Connect: Essential for QBO-specific firms
  • Digital CPA: Carefully curated vendors in shared social spaces for deeper conversations
  • Bridging the Gap: Focus on sustainable firms with an inclusive, come-as-you-are culture

Don’t overlook industry conferences outside accounting, either. If you specialize in construction or dental practices, you might find your next clients at those events.

Budget Solutions

If cost is the barrier, check out the Accounting Cornerstone Foundation. This nonprofit covers airfare, hotel, and admission for first-time attendees who can’t afford it. Multiple members of Nancy’s Ask a CPA community have already received scholarships and describe the experience as unparalleled. And if you understand the impact conferences make, consider paying it forward and becoming a donor.

Making the Most of Your Conference Experience

You’ve picked your conference. You’ve registered. Now what?

  • Set concrete goals. Come with one to three specific objectives. Maybe it’s meeting five people, evaluating two tools, or attending three  sessions. Nancy brings a notebook listing client issues to resolve and vendors to meet.
  • Connect beforehand. Check whether your online communities, such as Bookkeeping Buds or Ask a CPA, are organizing meetups. Having familiar faces changes everything, especially for introverts.
  • Don’t overpack your schedule. Nancy admits she’s a “maximizer” who spends 2.5 hours planning for each session slot. “Don’t be me,” she cautions. It’s okay to sleep in, take a nap, or skip sessions for hallway conversations.
  • Branch out from familiar faces. Nancy and a friend deliberately arrive early and stay late at conferences to have quality time together. This frees them to meet new people during the event itself.
  • The hallways matter. Relationships form in the informal moments, like meetups, dinners, and wandering at expos. When Tony had to physically steer Nancy through the expo hall because she kept getting pulled into conversations, it proved how deep conference relationships can become.
  • Start small if you’re introverted. A few years ago, Questian’s goal was simply to introduce herself to one person without panicking. That single step catalyzed speaking engagements, teaching opportunities, and eventually co-hosting a podcast.

Your Next Conference Could Change Everything

Sometimes the most valuable part of a conference isn’t what you learn, but who you become after being in that room.

CPE is the floor, not the ceiling. The real value comes from relationships, visibility, confidence, and belonging you can’t build behind a desk. Choose strategically based on what you need right now. Go in with goals. Connect with your community. Give yourself grace. Push yourself to meet one new person, even if it takes five minutes to work up the nerve.

These spaces are incredibly valuable for women in accounting. Seeing other women lead, share vulnerably, and succeed gives you permission to imagine bigger possibilities. The relationships become collaborations, partnerships, and the safety net you need when life gets complicated.

This profession can be isolating, especially if you’re running your own firm or navigating spaces where you’re one of only a few women. Conferences are an investment in who you’re becoming.

Your Camp Timberwood moment might be one introduction away.

Listen to the full episode for Nancy and Questian’s complete conference recommendations.

Three Women Are Redefining Success in Accounting by Breaking Every Conference Rule

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When Questian Telka attended her first accounting conference—Cindy Schroeder’s Bookkeeping Buds retreat—she discovered something unexpected. Instead of vendor pitches and surface-level networking, she found genuine connection. Watching Carla Caldwell speak, Telka pictured herself on that stage for the first time. She met Nancy McClelland, who later became her podcast co-host. Most importantly, she learned the conferences that transform careers aren’t always the ones with 5,000 attendees. Sometimes they’re intimate gatherings where you can let down your guard and actually be yourself.

In this episode of She Counts, McClelland and Telka sit down with three women reshaping the conference landscape: Erin Pohan, creator of WAVE Seattle; Sharrin Fuller, chair of AFWA’s Women Who Count; and Madeline Reeves, founder of Advisory Amplified. Together, they explore how women-led conferences fill gaps that mainstream events have ignored for years.

Meet the Women Behind the Movement

Pohan launched WAVE Seattle after attending Bridging the Gap 2024 – an unusually small accounting conference focused on mental health and sustainability in accounting; she and McClelland met there. WAVE (Women in Accounting Visionaries and Entrepreneurs) brings together 100 firm owners each May in Seattle. The next gathering is May 15, 2026, and it’s already a third sold out.

Fuller chairs Women Who Count, put on by the Accounting and Financial Women’s Alliance (AFWA). This national conference draws everyone from college students to retirees. This year’s conference is October 22-24 in Mesa, Arizona, and they’re expecting their biggest turnout yet—350 attendees. Fuller also has a book, “Unfollow the Rules,” launching the following week at Intuit Connect.

Reeves created Advisory Amplified, a six-city tour focused on hands-on advisory training. Starting September 23rd in Seattle, the tour hits LA, Chicago, Austin, Atlanta, and Boston. Each stop partners with local “hometown hosts” to keep momentum going after the event leaves town.

What connects these three conferences? They’re all deliberately small, intentionally intimate, and designed to create real relationships rather than just exchange business cards.

Where Being Real Is Professional

McClelland describes what makes these gatherings different: “There was a sense of safety. We could share our experiences, fears and self-doubts, and sharing those things really encourages bonding.”

This shift from hiding struggles to sharing them creates breakthrough moments. At WAVE Seattle, Pohan witnessed one during a peer strategy session about loneliness. “I had to take the stage right after that, and I just had these tears well up because I’m like, ‘me too. You’re not alone.’ I think every woman in that room felt that moment together.”

The communication style at these conferences is noticeably different. Fuller, who spent years in male-dominated venture capital before chairing Women Who Count, puts it bluntly. “With the men you need to scream to be heard. And with the women: if you scream, you won’t be heard.”

These conferences tackle what Pohan calls the “messy middle”—that challenging space where firm owners feel stuck between starting and scaling. Topics considered “too emotional” for mainstream conferences take center stage. Fuller asks the question many women face: “How do we get to that table while being ourselves without everybody saying, ‘oh, they’re just emotional’?”

The answer isn’t suppressing emotion or copying masculine styles. When one attendee heard Fuller speak about transitioning from employee to entrepreneur, she didn’t just take notes. She quit her job and started a firm helping others with burnout and balance. That’s what happens when conferences address real challenges instead of surface topics.

Moving from Inspiration to Action

Reeves discovered a common problem at mainstream conferences. A woman on an escalator told her, “I just feel like I’m drinking from a fire hose of inspiration and ideas, but I don’t really know how to bring these back and put them into practice inside of my firm.”

Advisory Amplified addresses this with workbooks designed like vinyl records that slide out of sleeves—a playful nod to their “Warped Tour for accountants” theme. Each session includes hands-on exercises and a “resource playlist” with templates attendees can implement immediately.

These conferences also upend traditional vendor participation. Instead of relegating sponsors to expo halls, they’re positioned as knowledge partners. Reeves, who worked with companies like Fathom, Avalara, and Intuit, explains, “I would be working with thousands of firms at a time, and so my visibility into what was working and what wasn’t was much more macro than people inside an individual firm.”

The conferences tackle harsh realities that other events avoid. Take pricing. While traditional conferences offer formulas, women-led events dig deeper. Reeves points out, “Nobody talks about our scarcity mentality, systemic barriers that impact how we think about money, or the ways the wage gap shapes women to think we should charge less.”

They also address personal realities. Reeves openly discusses how she “had to make the decision to choose my company over my marriage.” She notes that many female CEOs are divorced or in second marriages, and those who are married “have had to do a lot of work to ensure they have a partnership that isn’t operating off traditional gender roles.”

Even technology education takes on new meaning. At WAVE, Twyla Verhelst’s AI session emphasized why women must experiment with these tools now, because AI is “directly learning from the information and inputs we put in.” If women don’t shape its development, the technology will evolve without their perspectives. This session inspired Telka to invite Verhelst onto the She Counts podcast to discuss the topic further.

Building Networks That Actually Last

Unlike conferences that end when you leave, these events create ongoing communities. WAVE Seattle runs Zoom happy hours before and after the event. “It’s never just about the day of the event,” Pohan explains. Pre-event sessions help attendees arrive knowing faces, while post-event gatherings ensure insights become action.

Women Who Count takes a radical approach to inclusivity. Fuller made a bold decision: “Every event we have is for sponsors, exhibitors, everybody. There’s no sign up sheet.” This eliminates the system where celebrities get exclusive invites while newcomers are shut out. “What about the quiet girl in the corner that deserves to be there too?” Fuller asks.

Advisory Amplified partners with hometown hosts at each stop. These are local firms who keep the energy going after the tour moves on. They exclusively work with minority-owned local businesses and donate merchandise proceeds to the AICPA scholarship fund, addressing economic barriers to credentials.

These connections create lasting impact. McClelland shares an example: “There’s an amazing tax attorney who, it turns out, lives a few blocks away. And she and I have been friends ever since the first Women Who Count conference I attended.”

Perhaps most importantly, these conferences dismantle the competition myth. Fuller recalls Darren Root’s observation: “All of you own firms and take similar clients, but you almost never compete for the same client at the same time.” Now, when clients don’t fit her practice, she sends them to colleagues whose services match better.

This collaborative mindset changes everything. As Fuller describes, “When you feel that competitiveness from someone, you want to reach out and befriend them and teach them that’s not what we do. We are all friends now.”

The Future Is Intimate, Not Massive

WAVE Seattle caps attendance at 100. Women Who Count limits registration to 350. Advisory Amplified keeps each stop to 100. This approach ensures real connections over business card collections.

McClelland and Telka are bringing She Counts to Women Who Count with a two-hour live recording session on the main stage. The topic? Sexual harassment in the workplace, with an attorney and an HR expert as guests. Not material you’d see at a typical accounting conference.

What makes this movement revolutionary is the courage to acknowledge that traditional models have been failing women for decades. When conferences prioritize vulnerability over vendor halls, implementation over inspiration, and community over competition, they have the power to transform a profession.

Ready to experience the difference? Listen to the full podcast episode to hear how Pohan, Fuller, and Reeves are reshaping professional growth and discover which conference might catalyze your own transformation.

As McClelland and Telka remind us in every episode: if you’ve ever felt like you’re the only one, you’re not. And you don’t have to figure it out alone.

Whether you join WAVE Seattle’s pre-conference Zoom happy hours, experience Women Who Count’s radical inclusivity, or dive into Advisory Amplified’s hands-on workbooks, you’ll find what mainstream conferences have been missing: a community of women who understand that real professional growth requires real human connection.

Visit the She Counts LinkedIn page to share what you’d like to see at conferences for and by women. The organizers are listening… and more importantly, they’re acting on what they hear.