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Nancy McClelland

“I Don’t Deserve This” and Other Lies We Tell Ourselves During Awards Season

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Imagine finding out you’ve been nominated for one of the most prestigious recognition lists in your profession. Thousands of ProAdvisors across the globe, and someone thought you belonged among the best. But your first thought is, “I don’t deserve this. I’m not good enough. I don’t know enough.”

That was Questian Telka’s immediate reaction when she learned she’d been nominated for the Insightful Accountant Top 100 ProAdvisor list. And the kicker is, at that very moment, she was preparing to deliver a session on imposter syndrome at a major industry conference.

How do we know this? Because Nancy McClelland shared the actual WhatsApp text thread on Episode 29 of She Counts, the real-talk podcast for women in accounting. In this episode, Nancy is joined by guest co-host Melissa Miller Furgeson, stepping in for Questian. This topic is near and dear to Melissa’s heart, having applied for the Top 100 ProAdvisor list for five years before making it.

Together, Nancy and Melissa pull back the curtain on the messy, complicated emotions that swirl around professional awards. The desire. The dread. The jealousy. The shame about feeling envious. All of it, out in the open.

 

The tug-of-war between wanting recognition and dreading rejection

Let’s go back to that WhatsApp thread – it captures something many women in accounting feel but rarely say out-loud.

Questian’s first instinct after her nomination was not to tell anyone. “I am embarrassed even to share it because I know I won’t make the list,” she texted Nancy. She was already preparing her public disclaimer before celebrating the achievement.

Nancy admitted she wasn’t going to post about her nomination either. Then she saw a colleague share theirs and watched friends rally around them with congratulations. Nancy felt sad nobody was lifting her up before catching herself: “I hadn’t even given them the opportunity.”

Nancy’s reframe stopped the spiral. “Literally, not a single soul will see the final list of who wins and think, ‘Oh, of course Questian and Nancy didn’t win. I figured they wouldn’t.'” The fear of losing publicly is a movie playing in our own heads, not in public theaters.

What makes this fear even more frustrating is the enormous amount of work these applications require. As Nancy explained, most of them demand extensive documentation. The Insightful Accountant application requires you to track all your continuing education throughout the year, not just CPE. “It’s a huge amount of work when you’re applying,” Nancy said, “and it’s actually a huge amount of work throughout the course of the year.”

When the system fails you, you have to advocate for yourself

Both Nancy and Melissa experienced something that adds another layer to the vulnerability: system glitches that initially left them off finalist lists.

In 2024, Nancy discovered she wasn’t on the Top 100 ProAdvisor finalist list despite completing the grueling application. When she reached out to Insightful Accountant, their system showed she hadn’t submitted. Nancy knew better. She’d kept records of her answers because the application was “very difficult.” They added her name to the list, but at the bottom, out of alphabetical order, where fewer people would notice and be able to vote for her.

The same thing happened to Melissa in 2025. The system lost her application, but showed she’d spent significant time on it. They let her use points from her 2024 application, adding her name… also at the bottom of the list.

“I am really proud of both of us for being brave and following up,” Nancy said, “and finding out it was a system glitch rather than a failure on our part.”

This adds another dimension to the courage required: not just applying, but advocating for yourself when things go wrong.

The middle school energy nobody wants to admit

“You want recognition, but you fear rejection,” Nancy said, naming the tension directly. “You want visibility, but you fear judgment.” Then she compared the entire awards cycle to middle-school popularity dynamics.

Melissa said she’d literally discussed this exact parallel with her therapist that day.

Nancy’s philosophy is, “We don’t grow out of the people we were when we were younger. We just grow into a different version of that person.” The worry about belonging never fully disappears. Awards season dials it right back up.

Nancy illustrated this with a story about discovering Financial Cent’s Top 30 Accounting and Bookkeeping Firm Owners to Follow list. Her emotional journey included:

  1. Opening it, excited for recommendations
  2. Feeling proud seeing friends on it
  3. Realizing she wasn’t listed
  4. Spiraling into jealousy and shame
  5. Feeling shame about feeling jealous

She made herself breathe and refocus on gratitude. When she returned to finish reading, there she was at number 30. She’d spiraled through five emotions before finishing the article.

“Happy-jealous-proud should be a word,” Nancy suggested.

Even successes can trigger hesitation. Nancy was thrilled to make the Forbes Best-in-State list this year. It’s an award where you don’t even know you’re being considered until you win. But she’s been hesitant to share it because Forbes charges a fee to use its logo and name in promotional materials. “I’m kind of waiting to figure out how that works exactly before I tell people about it,” she admitted.

Breaking the shame spiral through honesty

Melissa was candid about jealousy. “It’s so real and natural and something I feel more often than I care to admit.”

She reframes her mindset by saying, “We want other people to do well,” Melissa said. “We love our colleagues and friends, but we also want a little bit for ourselves.”

Nancy’s therapist keeps it even simpler. When Nancy worries about being jealous, her therapist asks, “Do you want what they have?” When the answer is yes, “Well, that’s just a fact.”

No moral judgment. No character flaw. Just information.

The power of community courage

If these feelings are universal, the solution isn’t to eliminate them. It’s to act despite them, together.

Nancy organized nomination sessions for Ask a CPA members. People showed up thinking they were there to help others apply. The idea of applying themselves hadn’t crossed their minds.

Then one usually introverted and quiet member spoke up for the first time, to say, “I’m just gonna say this out-loud in case I’m not the only one. Does anybody else in here feel like an imposter?”

Every hand went up.

The group rallied. Members nominated one another, worked through applications together on mute during virtual study halls, and held one another accountable. As a result, 15 Ask a CPA members made the Top 100 finalists list.

Among them was Sandy Rehart, who’d been working in accounting for decades but never applied. Like Melissa years earlier, Sandy assumed “they weren’t talking about me.” Nancy got emotional describing Sandy’s joy at finally seeing her name on that list.

When the nomination matters more than the win

Nancy’s experience with the AICPA Global Women to Watch award proves this point. The hardest part was asking a colleague to nominate her, essentially saying out-loud, “I want this. Will you help me?”

When she posted about the nomination on LinkedIn, talking about the women who inspired her and what it meant personally, the response was overwhelming. But when she actually won, “practically nobody said anything.”

The vulnerability in sharing the journey resonated more than the achievement itself.

Understanding what awards really are makes sharing easier. “Awards are visibility events. They’re not objective truth,” Melissa observed. Vendors benefit every time you post about a nomination. That’s the business model. You’re not bragging, you’re participating.

Practical permission: Scripts for showing up

Nancy calls it “flexing the Ask muscle,” or pushing through fear to ask for what you want. Every time you do it, it gets a little easier.

As Melissa tells her adult kids, “What’s the worst that can happen? You don’t have it now. If you go for it and don’t get it, you’re in exactly the same place.”

For those ready to post but unsure how, here are suggested scripts from the episode:

  • “Look at all the incredible people on this list. What an honor to be included.”
  • Share that tooting your own horn is hard, and why you’re doing it anyway
  • Tell the personal story of why this award matters to you
  • Express gratitude by tagging people and vendors who made it possible
  • Frame it as paying it forward. “I want to be the example for others that someone was for me.”

Nancy teared up when Melissa said, “We are not rooting for each other to lose. We celebrate each other.”

Raise your hand. Someone behind you is watching.

The most important takeaway from this conversation is to show up for the awards process, even when you feel undeserving. It creates permission for others to show up, too.

As Nancy said in that original text thread, “If we don’t show up, then other people don’t feel like they have reason to show up, either.”

For women in accounting, especially in a profession that hasn’t always rewarded self-promotion, these conversations matter. Every woman who posts about her nomination, asks for a recommendation, or fills out an application after years of assuming “they’re not talking about me” is lighting the path for someone behind her.

Melissa closed the episode with a quote from Mae Jemison, the first Black woman in space: “Never limit yourself because of others’ limited imagination, and never limit others because of your own limited imagination.”

Listen to the full episode of She Counts to hear the complete text thread and the unfiltered emotion in Nancy’s and Melissa’s voices. Then head to the She Counts LinkedIn page and share: What’s an opportunity you’ve been too afraid to pursue, or a time you went for it anyway?

The shiny trophy is nice. But the courage to raise your hand is what actually changes things for you and for every woman watching who needs to see someone go first.

You Don’t Have to Feel Confident to Act With Authority. Here’s the Hack

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Picture a sixth-grader in the mid-1980s, standing at the edge of a school dumpster, working up the nerve to climb in. Cassie Divine had accidentally tossed her orthodontic retainer onto her lunch tray and into the trash. This $150 device might as well have cost a million dollars, in her household. Her mother insisted she  find it. So in she went, alongside the school janitor, digging through the garbage until she came up with the retainer in hand.

The retainer got sterilized, but her reputation didn’t. Word spread, and in an era when Garbage Pail Kids were having their pop-culture moment, a classmate landed on the nickname that followed her for years: “Trashy Cassie.” She was certain her life was over. She begged her mother to let her switch schools.

If that middle-school logic sounds familiar, you’re in good company. On this episode of She Counts, hosts Questian Telka and Nancy McClelland both admit they made the exact same plea to their own mothers. “Can I just change schools?” seemed, at the time, like a completely reasonable solution to an unbearable problem.

But this episode isn’t really about surviving middle school. It’s about what that scrappy, humiliated, dumpster-diving version of Cassie became, and how, three decades later, Cassie discovered she could summon her on demand.

From Dumpster to Boardroom: Meeting Your Alter Ego

Fast-forward thirty years from that dumpster. Cassie Divine is a former Intuit SVP who led QuickBooks for nearly two decades. But Cassie found herself in another impossible situation. She was leading an initiative where tens, maybe hundreds of millions of dollars were on the line. But her senior male colleague kept talking over her, dismissing her ideas, and twice called her boss to complain that she was being “too aggressive.”

“I remember driving home on my commute and thinking through like, what are my choices?” Cassie recalled. The adult version of “Can I switch schools?” had arrived.

Nancy and Questian immediately recognized the double standard. “With a man, it’s leadership and confidence,” Nancy pointed out. “But with a woman, it’s aggressive.” When they asked if either had met a woman who hadn’t faced this, the answer was unanimous: never.

Stuck in traffic and dread, Cassie thought about Trashy Cassie, the girl who climbed into that dumpster and survived the humiliation that followed. “She can deal with this,” Cassie realized. So she channeled that sixth-grader’s resilience long enough to text her colleague and set a clear boundary: “You can’t treat me like this. You can’t treat our team like this.”

“You don’t have to become someone tougher,” Cassie explained. “You remember that you already are her, and she’s available for you to be in this moment.”

The beauty of this approach is that you’re not pretending or manufacturing a new personality. You’re accessing real strength from your own history. When Cassie needed to advocate for a team member, she remembered being “the toughest mom you’ve ever seen” as she advocated for her daughter in a hospital room. That’s who she became in the meeting.

Building Your Catalog of Courage

The alter ego only works if you can summon it intentionally. That means building what Cassie calls a “catalog” of the times you’ve survived hard things.

“You’ve survived 100% of your hardest days,” Cassie said, borrowing a line from Peloton instructor Robin Arzon. Those survival stories can include advocating for someone in a hospital, surviving an illness, or even finding the right words to console a teammate who lost. Each memory is proof that you’ve already been the person who could handle whatever you’re facing now.

Nancy suggested turning this into a journaling exercise. Name your alter egos and write down their three strongest traits. What makes Trashy Cassie powerful? What about the version of you who comforts someone through loss? “Reject everybody else’s definitions for you,” Cassie advised, “and decide the ones that you are.”

The shift is profound. Instead of asking “Can I do this?” you ask “When have I already been the person who could?”

But we often believe you need to feel confident before you can act that way, and that trips up many ambitious women.

Confidence Is Something You Do, Not Something You Feel

“You’re not going to feel confident until you act that way,” Cassie said, cutting straight through one of the biggest myths about professional authority.

Nancy, drawing on cognitive behavioral therapy, explained the mechanics. Your thinking, feeling, and doing selves don’t need to align in order for you to take action. Her shorthand is “putting your yoga pants on.” You can dread the class, doubt you need it, and pull the pants on anyway as you head there. The action doesn’t wait for the feeling’s permission.

Cassie keeps the wisdom “Just act as if” on a Post-it note. The feeling follows the behavior, not the other way around.

For Questian, this revelation reframed her entire early career. “I looked up to women who were farther along and assumed they felt as confident as they appeared,” she admitted. “The idea that they might be projecting confidence they didn’t feel was a foreign concept.”

To trigger this shift on demand, all three women use specific cues. Cassie keeps a picture of a goldfish wearing a shark fin. It looks like a shark in the water, but it’s still just a goldfish underneath. It’s a good visual reminder.

Then there’s the music. Cassie maintains “imposter syndrome playlists” to hype her up beforehand, and one called “Victory Lap” loaded with ridiculous anthems like DJ Khaled’s “All I Do Is Win” for celebrating afterward. Nancy rediscovered Elton John’s “I’m Still Standing” during a brutal tax season, hearing it as proof she’d survived before and would again.

Each time you act confidently and survive, you bank more evidence. The behavior gradually becomes genuine confidence. It’s a hack that builds on itself.

The Guardrails: Clarity Over Cruelty

With this kind of power comes the need for boundaries. Cassie is clear that “this isn’t permission to be unkind. This is permission to be clear.”

The alter ego is situational armor. It’s something you put on for a specific moment and take off when it’s done. If you feel yourself ramping up the “tough lady” too much, that’s your signal to recalibrate. The goal is always clarity, and you never want to lose alignment with your values.

Cassie’s most powerful reframe might be to lead with the outcome rather than the feeling. “So many times our feelings affect what we say and how we say it,” she explained. “If instead I’ve shifted to why it’s important to give this feedback or why it’s important to raise my prices, it sets the tone for everything.”

Her final guardrail, written on another Post-it, is “Talk less, say more.” She learned this after spending 15 minutes explaining her feelings to a difficult colleague and getting nowhere. In a similar situation some months later, she kept it simple. When he said “I don’t know what you mean,” she replied, “I think you do,” and that was that. It was far more effective.

The group shared their favorite conversation-enders. After drafting 17 angry email responses to a jerk colleague, Cassie finally sent just one word: “Unsubscribe.” He read it exactly as intended (“I’m done with you”), and it led to their most productive conversation ever.

For accounting professionals, these tools apply directly to our daily challenges, including pricing conversations, scope creep, and difficult clients. The same playbook works whether we’re setting boundaries with a bully or holding our rates with a demanding client.

Permission to Be Powerful

What Cassie offers is permission to access the strength you’ve already proven. Her mission with Career Hack reflects her goal of helping more women gain power and use their voices more often. Not everyone needs to be a CEO, but learning to act with impact makes the profession better for everyone.

“Women don’t lack capability or intelligence or ambition or work ethic,” Cassie said. “But I do think we lack permission.”

The next time you face a hard conversation, a big project, or a room full of people who underestimate you, remember you don’t need to become someone new. You just need to remember who you’ve already been.

As Nancy put it, “When have I already been the person who can handle hard things?”

Listen to the full episode, and then join the conversation by following the She Counts LinkedIn podcast page and share your answer: When have you already been the person who can handle hard things?

What Women in Accounting Learn When They Stop Scaling and Start Choosing

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Erin Pohan remembers exactly how it felt the first time she walked into Bridging the Gap and saw accountants laughing in hallways and clustering around tables like they’d known each other for years. “How do they do that?” she wondered. “Don’t they sit at their desks all day like I do?”

Then she spotted Nancy McClelland, Jennifer Dymond, and Roman Villard at a table. She walked up and said simply, “I follow you guys on LinkedIn. It’s so nice to meet you.”

“They all turned their entire body to me and looked me in the eye and wanted to know who I was,” Erin recalled during the live recording of She Counts at the Women in Accounting & Finance Visionaries & Entrepreneurs (WAVE) Seattle event. “In that moment I felt seen.”

She refused to wait another year to feel that way again. So she brought it home to Seattle.

From Conference Afterglow to WAVE-Seattle

After experiencing that connection at Bridging the Gap, Erin didn’t want to hop on planes to Las Vegas or Florida to find community again. She threw an evening WAVE event to test the waters. The momentum was so strong that she posted on LinkedIn to gauge wider interest.

“We had women from ten different states and Canada who were like, yes, sign me up. I want community,” Erin shared with the live audience. “They don’t care where they have to go. They just wanted to have the conversations that we all need to have.”

This was WAVE’s second year, and women flew in from Florida, Chicago, Boston, DC, and Baltimore. What started as Erin’s attempt to recreate her conference afterglow became a space where women in accounting could have the conversations that rarely happen out-loud.

The Success Definitions That Were Never Yours

Nancy has run The Dancing Accountant for 25 years. “Fewer than half of those years have been rosy in any way, shape or form,” she admitted to the audience.

The turning point came from a single crushing conversation. Early in her career, a vendor representative asked about her business model. When Nancy explained she wanted to work in the business, not on it, i.e., no staff, managing schedules, or deliverables, he called her stupid.

“You’re avoiding scaling and you’re leaving money on the table,” he’d said.

Nancy was younger then. She absorbed it the way many of us absorb criticism from someone who sounds authoritative. She believed him.

“At age 54, I can tell you I don’t want to scale. I don’t like scaling. I’m not good at managing a team,” Nancy said. “I’m really, really good at meeting with clients. I’m really good at preparing tax-ready books and teaching people how to do that. So why would I scale?”

She concluded, “I am leaving money on the table. The table can keep it.”

But that vendor’s casual insult cost her ten years. “It took me over a decade to dig out from the mess that I made by listening to what he had to say.”

Co-host Questian Telka’s story is more recent but equally familiar. She’d absorbed the same industry gospel of scale, scale, scale.

“If you don’t have a team of 20, then you’re not really a firm,” she said, mimicking the voices. “You have a job. It’s not a business.”

Nancy cut in, “I think that’s just a shit thing to say.”

“I disagree with it entirely,” Questian shared.

Over the past year, Questian has completely restructured her firm. She let go of her team, offboarded most clients, and pivoted to nonprofit CFO work exclusively. “It’s given me the ability to make a lot more money with a lot fewer clients and a lot less time,” she explained. “Most profit with the least amount of work. I want to enjoy the work I’m doing.”

Why You Need a Board of Directors

Finding courage to rewrite the rules rarely happens alone. That’s where your personal board of directors comes in.

“If you’re the CEO of your own life, who’s your chairman? And who else sits around that table?” Erin asked, sharing the framework that had lit her up after an entrepreneur session.

For Nancy, the chairman is her husband. He’s a software developer who processes her verbal torrents and spots patterns she can’t see. Questian calls him “Nancy’s personal large language model.”

“He is the best large language model ever,” Nancy laughed. “A little less talky than ChatGPT, to be sure.”

The value became clear in one memorable story. Nancy had a famously difficult client. When the client’s lawyer fired Nancy during a dispute, Nancy started arguing to keep the client. Her husband grabbed her arm and whispered, “Nancy, this is freedom. Run!”

“He’d heard all the times I vented,” Nancy explained.

The rest of Nancy’s board includes her “bestie” Melissa Miller Furgeson and her therapist, whom she found in the most accountant way possible.

“I made a spreadsheet of all of the therapists in Chicago,” Nancy confessed. “I kept not choosing one because I was overwhelmed by all of the information.” Finally, she pulled up Google Maps, typed “therapist,” and picked the closest one who wasn’t already her client.

Questian’s board centers on her partner, who pushes her past her comfort zone. At one point, she texted Nancy, “I just borrowed my boyfriend’s balls” to find courage for a business risk.

But your board must have diversity.

“I actually really don’t like the term ‘like-minded people,'” Erin admitted. She values different perspectives, even from something as simple as a LinkedIn poll about a botched swag order. The range of responses helped recalibrate her own reaction.

The Women Still Doing It Alone

When Erin asked what mindset shift the hosts hoped attendees would carry forward, Nancy had her answer: You don’t have to do this alone.

Then she spent the day at WAVE and realized, “You already know you don’t have to do this alone because you’re in this room.” Some attendees had flown across the country to be there.

So Nancy pivoted, “You have other people in your life that need to be taught that they don’t have to do it alone.”

The challenge was direct. When you return to your office, think of one person who needs permission to stop grinding in silence. Reach out to them.

For those ready to find community, the panel offered specific recommendations. Bridging the Gap topped Nancy’s list. It’s where she learned from Nayo Carter-Gray how to take a vacation during tax season. (“I literally live in Mexico for four months during tax season,” Nancy shared.) Local one-day events like WAVE and Advisory Amplified help you meet nearby practitioners who become real connections.

But what if you’re terrified of networking?

“When I first started going to conferences, I couldn’t even talk to anyone. I was too scared,” Questian admitted.

The extroverts will help. Nancy and Sharrin Fuller have a standing offer. If you spot them at any conference, come up and they’ll make sure you meet people. Andrea MacDonald posted online that she’d be “lurking in the corner” as an introvert at WAVE, asking people to find her. That willingness to be vulnerable matters.

There’s also the Accounting Cornerstone Foundation, which provides scholarships for conference attendance. A December fundraiser that Jason Staats matched dollar-for-dollar helped six people attend conferences they couldn’t otherwise afford.

“Give without expecting to receive anything in return,” Questian said, summing up the philosophy underneath it all. 

Write Your Own Rules

One moment during the Q&A captured the energy perfectly. When an audience member expressed interest in selling her firm, Erin asked if anyone might want to buy a firm or clients, and hands shot up across the room. “Somebody take a picture of this!” Nancy shouted, as attendees scrambled to capture all the raised hands. Less than two months later, a deal was closed.

These are the conversations and connections that happen when women in accounting gather to talk honestly about burning out and rebuilding, throwing traditional rules out the window, and creating your own path.

“Figure out your why,” Questian urged. “Define what success is to you and don’t listen to or look at what anyone else is doing.”

After everything shared in this episode, they left the audience and listeners with one question: “What’s one definition of success you’ve personally outgrown?”

Listen to the full episode above for the complete conversation, including rapid-fire Q&A about finding therapists, leadership coaches, and more. Then follow the She Counts podcast on LinkedIn to join the conversation.

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.

Nobody Is Going to Hand You Power, So Here’s How to Build Executive Presence on Your Own Terms

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Lindsay Patterson’s very first day as a reporter should have been routine. Twenty years ago, she walked into a small community meeting in Uvalde, Texas, fresh out of college, holding a notepad and recorder, ready to cover a state representative’s remarks for the local paper. She sat down, pen ready. Then the representative stood up, scanned the room, and asked whether anyone from the Uvalde Leader-News was present. When Lindsay raised her hand, he announced he wouldn’t speak as long as she was in the room.

She didn’t stand her ground or fight back. She walked out, sat in her car, and cried.

Today, Lindsay is the CEO of CPA QualityPro, a compliance platform that helps firms navigate licensure and CPE requirements. She’s served as executive vice president at the Institute of Internal Auditors and spent years at the AICPA working on accounting standards and the CPA exam. She holds multiple certifications, including CPA, CIA, and CAE, all earned while working full time and raising kids.

In Episode 30 of She Counts, the real-talk podcast for women in accounting, Lindsay joined hosts Questian Telka and Nancy McClelland to unpack a frustrating phrase in professional development: executive presence. It’s the vague feedback that shows up in performance reviews as the reason you didn’t get promoted, without anyone explaining what it means or how to get it.

Women are often told that executive presence means adopting traits traditionally associated with male leaders. Lindsay argues that the real measure is much simpler: whether the people around you leave interactions believing you’re the right person for the job.

 

Redefining Executive Presence

Many of us absorbed a version of executive presence without questioning it. “I had a very traditional view of executive presence. It’s like the three-piece suit guy pulling out a pocket watch,” Lindsay said, admitting where she started. “He’s speaking aggressively and assertively. I’m like, oh, that guy has executive presence.”

Nancy shared her own assumptions. For women, she thought it meant Chanel bags, specific jewelry, and perfect polish. “I will tell you, if we’re going to judge me on my ability to make that happen, I will fail,” she said. “I look like I’m dressed up for a high school play or something.”

But Lindsay’s working definition is simpler. “If you were to distill it into simple terms, it’s just instilling confidence in people. Are people confident I can do a good job? Can I lead the team? Can I deliver results or do what I say I am going to do?”

The research backs this up. Lindsay cited the Coqual findings that gravitas, or how you present yourself, is what people overwhelmingly evaluate for executive presence. Communication makes up about a third. Appearance is only 5%.

This is good news for anyone worried their personal style disqualifies them from leadership. Lindsay owns a fully sequined black suit and has worn floor-length tutu gowns to office meetings. She’s also been a CPA Practice Advisor 40 Under 40 honoree and runs a successful company. The two things work together just fine.

But Lindsay was clear that executive presence is not “overtalking people, interrupting, being really aggressive and mean.” She added an important caveat. “I say that’s not what it should look like. But we have to recognize it is viewed that way in some office cultures.”

She shared a story that made Nancy ask if it was real. At one company, a man criticized another executive for wearing a Rolex because it showed “new money.” If you wanted to instill confidence as a leader, apparently you needed at least a Patek Philippe. “What?” Lindsay said. She didn’t last long in that culture.

The story might be absurd, but it shows something important. In many places, executive presence gets defined by an unspoken code written by and for one specific kind of leader. When that code becomes the standard for measuring women, the game is rigged from the start.

The Double Bind: When the Rules Work Against You

Even with a better definition, women face a structural problem. The same behaviors that signal confidence in men get labeled as aggression in women.

“How often do you hear in performance reviews that a male was aggressive? Never. That gets assigned to women,” Lindsay stated plainly. Being direct, standing firm, and pushing back in meetings gets men praised for “standing up for their beliefs” while women get called “difficult” (or worse).

Then there’s what Questian called the competence-warmth trap, referencing Vanessa Van Edwards’ research. If you’re warm and approachable, people see you as less competent. You need both warmth and competence to hit the sweet spot, but too much warmth works against you.

The research on competence perception is even tougher. Lindsay delivered her “good news, bad news” moment. “If I show up and I am just as good as my male colleague, I’m probably going to be viewed as less competent. And there is a whole body of research to show this.”

Women don’t just need to meet the bar. They need to clearly exceed it, just to be seen as equal. That means overpreparing is essential.

The dynamics shift with race, too. Lindsay acknowledged their position, noting, “We’re all three white women.” She’s seen firsthand what she can get away with that a Black female colleague cannot. Nancy put numbers to it. If white women prepare at 120%, Black women face pressure to deliver at 170%.

Then came the episode’s most provocative moment. Questian asked if coaching women on executive presence puts the burden on them to fix a structural problem. Lindsay’s answer was direct. “Yes, we’re asking women to do this. You know why? Because nobody else is going to do it for us. People in power are not just going to hand us power. That’s not how power systems work.”

“The world’s not going to dominate itself,” Nancy said, summing it up.

But Lindsay distinguished between assimilation and strategy. The goal is to work strategically within existing systems by pushing boundaries, gaining influence, and reshaping culture from within. “As we rise to power, not only are we going to instill our own cultural norms, but then you’ll start to see cultures change.”

Your Practical Playbook: Build Presence Through Preparation

Lindsay’s closing advice was the episode’s most powerful line. “Confidence is just preparation. If you do something enough times, you will come across as confident. You will have that executive presence.”

Executive presence is a skill built through practice. Here’s Lindsay’s concrete playbook:

  • Start with an audit. Record yourself before a difficult conversation or presentation. Watch the playback and ask, Does my body language say what I want? Do I sound knowledgeable? Am I the confident person I want this audience to see? You likely already have the material, since most meetings are now recorded on Zoom.
  • Separate sound from sight. Listen to your recording with no video. Just evaluate your speaking. Then watch with no sound to evaluate body language. Then watch both together. This lets you see what each channel actually communicates.
  • Rehearse with your circle. If you have trusted professional friends, use them. Practice difficult conversations. Do dress rehearsals for interviews. Ask for feedback on how you plan to challenge your boss. Lindsay does this with her own circle, and she extended an invitation to listeners. “If you don’t have that and you’re listening and you’re like, ‘I have this interview coming up,’ literally connect with me on LinkedIn. I’m happy to help. Other women did that for me.”
  • Prepare for disruption. Anticipate what typically derails you. “Is Bob going to interrupt me like he always does? Well, how am I going to respond?” Plan your response. When the moment comes, hold your ground without escalating.
  • Master the context. Your presence should shift based on your audience. As Nancy noted, the best version of you when meeting with nervous small-business owners differs from the one you use when meeting with a board chair. Both are authentic, but context defines what instills confidence.

For virtual meetings, have the camera on (especially when presenting), use good lighting, choose a quiet location, and avoid multitasking. Nancy made the trust connection clear. If she can’t see someone’s eyes on Zoom, she doesn’t trust them.

In person, make sure your shoulders are back and your head is up. Look confident and take up space. Lindsay admitted to intentional “manspreading” in meetings. “I have every right to be here, and I’m going to show that with my body.”

Don’t forget the practical details. Rehearse in the shoes you’ll actually wear. Nancy learned this after nearly injuring herself while presenting in heels. Now she presents in go-go boots that match her Dancing Accountant brand. Lindsay shared a cautionary tale about a team member who wore a tube top to an external Zoom meeting. Over a year later, the client still talked about the tube top instead of the meeting content.

The Scared Child Inside Us All

Lindsay shared what she wishes someone had told her 20 years ago. “Most people are faking it. We are just doing our best, trying to get by.”

Nancy connected this to waiting for the moment she’d become a confident adult. “When I realized that line doesn’t exist and a lot of us are carrying that scared child inside us until we die, then you’re like, oh, cool. Well, then I can start taking care of that scared kid because I’m also a confident adult.”

Lindsay offered one more insight from experience. “You could be the most round, juiciest peach on the tree. And there’s always going to be somebody who doesn’t like peaches.” You won’t be everyone’s cup of tea. The sooner you accept that, the sooner you can focus on instilling confidence in the people who matter to your goals.

Your Presence Is What People Remember

Executive presence has been weaponized for too long as vague feedback that holds women to standards built for someone else. But Lindsay’s definition offers us something useful: instilling confidence in the people around you.

The double bind is real. The bar for perceived competence is measurably higher for women and higher still for women of color. These are structural realities, not personal failures. Recognizing them means understanding the terrain so you can navigate it.

The antidote is preparation. Record yourself. Rehearse with trusted peers. Anticipate the disruptors. Adapt to context. You build confidence through repetition.

No one will hand women the keys to power. The work of getting inside the system and reshaping it falls on us. As more women rise by carrying their own authentic executive presence, they can redefine what leadership looks like for those to come.

Questian closed with Maya Angelou’s words: “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said. People will forget what you did. But people will never forget how you made them feel.”

That’s executive presence.

Listen to the full episode, and if you take one thing from this conversation, share it on the She Counts Podcast LinkedIn page. What will you try differently the next time you walk into a room or join a Zoom call?