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She Counts

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.

Why This Firm Owner Woke Up Unable to Move After Planning Her Path to $3 Million

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Picture being six months pregnant, climbing a ladder—not stairs, a ladder—in slingback heels to reach your desk in a famous New York fashion stylist’s loft. For most people, this would be a wake-up call about workplace safety. For Justine Lackey, it became the spark that pioneered virtual bookkeeping in the early 1990s, using FedEx, zip drives, and messengers to revolutionize an entire industry before online banking even existed.

In this episode of She Counts, hosts Nancy McClelland and Questian Telka welcome Lackey, a true trailblazer who built and sold a successful bookkeeping firm while challenging every assumption about what business success should look like. As McClelland shares in her introduction, Lackey is “a devoted mother to three and mentor and coach in her incubator program for bookkeepers and accountants growing their firms.”

When Your Body Knows What Your Mind Won’t Admit

“I’m an accidental entrepreneur,” Lackey explains early in the conversation. She landed in bookkeeping through a roommate’s invitation and never planned to build what she calls “the H&R Block of bookkeeping firms.” Without a college degree (she didn’t finish until 2009, well after she established her firm, Good Cents Management) or corporate experience, she lacked the traditional frameworks most firm owners bring to their businesses.

This lack of traditional structure had consequences. “Everybody says, ‘I wanna be successful,’ but that’s ambiguous,” Lackey says. “You have to get into the details of it. I wanna make $250,000 a year, or $500,000 a year. I wanna work 20 hours. I wanna have a team of five.” Without this clarity, she found herself swept along by what she identifies as cultural pressure to constantly expand.

The breaking point came during an Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS) planning session with her team. Together, they mapped out a roadmap to $3 million in revenue. The math was clear: seven to nine bookkeeping teams with redundancy meant 14 to 18 bookkeepers. Add client service managers and a true integrator or COO, and they’d need approximately 28 employees.

“The energy in the room was like, yeah, woo!” Lackey recalls. “Like when you’re at conference world and you’re walking on hot coals.” Everyone left excited, including Lackey—until the next morning.

“I woke up and I literally could not move my right shoulder,” she shares. The pain was so severe her massage therapist couldn’t even work through the tension. “What is this weight on your shoulders?” the therapist asked. As Lackey recounted the previous day’s planning, the connection became clear. This wasn’t an injury; it was her body rejecting a path that violated her values.

The Hard Conversation Nobody Wants to Have

Recognizing she didn’t want to build a 28-person company meant facing her excited team with a complete reversal. “That’s ethical leadership in action,” Lackey explains. “That’s hard conversations.”

Lackey returned to her team with honesty, “It was really exciting and I believe this can be done. But at the end of the day, this is my life. I don’t wanna do that.”

“It’s terrifying to put your tail between your legs,” she admits. But as Telka points out, “Admitting that you have taken a wrong turn builds a lot of respect.”

This moment revealed a deeper truth about integrity. “We often talk about integrity in relation to other people,” Lackey notes, “but we don’t talk about integrity in relation to ourselves. When we’re out of alignment with integrity, that causes inner conflict and stress.”

Why Growing Sideways Beats Growing Up

The conversation then turns to a concept that challenges everything the industry teaches about success: lateral growth versus vertical growth.

“Whenever people on LinkedIn talk about having a successful firm, they always talk about revenue,” McClelland observes. “They almost never, ever, ever talk about profit or net income margins.”

Telka adds her favorite quote, “Revenue is vanity, profit is sanity.”

Lackey explains the difference. “Vertical growth is the most common type of growth people discuss—raising your revenue number and client acquisition. Those are really sexy numbers.” But lateral growth—the systems, processes, technology, and team development—”requires patience. It is very detailed, hard work.”

The challenge is that small firms can’t do both simultaneously. “There are very few people, particularly in smaller firms, who can do this all at once,” Lackey emphasizes. “So you need to make a choice.”

Her choice involved intentional constraints that seemed counterintuitive. She worked exclusively with QuickBooks Online, turning away Xero users even when they begged. She refused wholesale clients with inventory because she “hated counting bits and bobs and COGS.” These weren’t limitations; they were strategic decisions to build deep expertise.

Even technology decisions followed this principle. When Good Cents invested months implementing a new practice management system that the team hated, they made a shocking choice: abandon it entirely and return to Google Sheets. “Sometimes lo-fi is hi-fi,” Lackey explains. “Technology platforms are like people, and not all people are your people.”

The Blindfold Moment That Changed Everything

Perhaps the most powerful part of the conversation comes when Lackey shares how she discovered her business was actually a sellable asset. “When you live in a scarcity-based poverty mentality,” she explains, “it is hard for you to see a different reality for yourself.”

During one particularly frustrating period, she vented to a designer friend, “I’m so frustrated. I just wanna quit.”

“But you could just sell it,” the designer replied casually.

“Sell what?” Lackey asked, genuinely confused.

“It’s like I was blindfolded and somebody snatched the blindfold off,” she recalls. The designer pointed out the obvious: recurring revenue, strong operations, great clients. “You’re a great business. You could sell it.”

This revelation sent Lackey on a research journey. She devoured “Built to Sell” by John Warrillow in a single day and discovered firms were selling for about one times annual revenue. Her firm was worth more than her 960-square-foot cottage.

“I couldn’t even see what was possible for myself,” she admits.

When she eventually sold Good Cents in 2023, 28 potential buyers courted her. The relationships she’d built—including one client who’d been with her 22 years and had hosted her baby shower— created incredible value. “Relationships are assets,” Lackey emphasizes, “even if we can’t line item them on a balance sheet.”

The Secret Every Firm Owner Needs to Hear

Near the end of the conversation, Lackey shares what she calls “a secret that nobody talks about.” Every firm owner wants help.

This insight applies whether you run your own firm or work in someone else’s. “When you can come into a conversation and say, ‘I really like working here and I really like the work I’m doing, but these are the recurring problems and this is the solution I propose’—that takes courage,” she explains.

McClelland adds her own experience, “My best mentor ever taught me that important lesson. She said, ‘Come to me with solutions, not problems.’”

Your Next Step Toward Intentional Growth

Lackey now channels these lessons through her Modern Firm Challenge, a free five-day program running one hour per day. “My personal mission statement is that I help the world by helping people,” she shares. The challenge focuses on the biggest pain points: onboarding, monthly close, pricing, and increasingly, technology and AI.

“You’re not gonna fix all the things,” she tells participants. “You’re gonna look at the lessons and say, this is what I’m gonna focus on right now.”

McClelland predicts some firm owners might initially resist. “You’re telling me I need to slow down to speed up? I don’t have five days to take off to do this.”

But Lackey’s response is practical: “The classes are only an hour a day. We run them from one to two.” Plus, they record everything for those who can’t attend live.

The results speak for themselves. As Lackey notes, “I’m not here to tell you you can build a million dollar firm overnight. I’m here to tell you you can do whatever you wanna do, but it’s going to take time.”

Permission to Choose Your Own Path

The conversation closes with McClelland sharing a powerful quote from author Laurie Perez: “I reserve the right to evolve. What I think and feel today is subject to revision tomorrow.”

This perfectly captures what Lackey has given listeners: permission to have clarity about what they want and to change their minds when their goals no longer serve them.

Ready to build the business you actually want? Sign up to get on the VIP list for Lackey’s next Modern Firm Challenge at justinelackey.com/register. You can also find her on LinkedIn or join her free Facebook group, The Incubator, with about 4,000 members building community together.

As this episode of She Counts proves, building with intention rather than endless expansion might just be the key to creating the valuable, sustainable business you’ve always dreamed of, even if you didn’t know it was possible.

The Real Reason Your Female Colleagues Keep Disappearing from Leadership

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You’re watching your female colleagues disappear. One by one, the talented women who started their accounting careers alongside you vanish from the partnership track. When you look around the conference table at senior leadership meetings, you realize that although women make up half of all new hires, only 19% of firm partners are women.

In a recent episode of the She Counts podcast, “Still Under Glass,” hosts Questian Telka and Nancy McClelland tackle this leadership crisis head-on. But they’re not just naming the problem. They’re offering examples and solutions and calling on firm leaders to make fundamental cultural shifts.

The Pipeline Problem That Isn’t

Something dramatic happens between new CPAs entering the profession and reaching partnership, and it’s not a lack of talent.

Unfortunately, this problem isn’t unique to accounting. Across business sectors, women hold only 14% of executive roles. But accounting starts with gender parity, making the difference even more stark. “We know that we have 50% as women, and we know they’re talented,” Telka emphasizes. “The issue is that the profession is losing women mid-career, not because they aren’t capable, but because the system really isn’t designed for us to stay.”

Making the Invisible Visible

Telka shares that a male colleague recently told her he wants to help create positive change but doesn’t understand the issues or how to help. To eliminate that excuse, we need to spell out exactly what’s happening and what allies can do about it.

The biases start small but compound quickly. Studies show men interrupt women 2.5 times more often than women interrupt men. Women are routinely asked to take notes in meetings or organize office celebrations, rather than men. They receive vague feedback like, “you’re doing great, keep it up,” while men more often get specific, actionable guidance tied to promotions.

McClelland adds, “Women of color have a much harder time. There are many different kinds of privilege.” These biases get disguised with phrases like “she’s just not quite the right fit,” a convenient way to mask discrimination that’s hard to pinpoint.

However, recognizing bias is just the first step. Three critical barriers keep women under glass: the motherhood penalty, the flexibility trap, and the sponsorship gap.

The Motherhood Penalty: Same Event, Opposite Outcomes

The data is jaw-dropping. Mothers are considered 12% less committed to their jobs than non-mothers, while fathers are seen as 5% more committed than non-fathers. This perception gap translates directly into salary differences. Mothers receive starting salaries 7.9% lower than childless women and 8.6% lower than fathers.

“The exact same life event, becoming a parent, becomes either a career accelerator or a career killer depending solely on your gender,” the hosts note.

Telka shares a story about her ex-husband taking their son to a playground. When his brother asked how he felt about “babysitting” while the women went shopping, he immediately corrected him: “I’m not babysitting. This is my child.”

That single word—babysitting—captures everything. When fathers care for their children, they’re going above and beyond. When mothers do it, it’s just expected. Worse, it’s considered evidence that they’re not serious about their jobs.

This bias affects daily decisions that slowly strangle women’s careers. Women get passed over for major accounts based on assumptions about their availability. “They’re thinking: you’re a mom, you don’t want to have a larger account,” Telka explains. Instead of asking what support women need to keep advancing, firms quietly write them off.

The Flexibility Trap: Benefits That Destroy Careers

Many firms advertise flexible schedules and family-friendly policies. But there’s a massive gap between having these policies and creating a culture where women can use them without killing their career trajectory.

“Don’t say you’re going to give unlimited vacation or flexible schedules and then expect your employees not to use it,” Telka warns. “Real flexibility isn’t just a policy; it’s putting it in practice.”

McClelland shares an infuriating story that shows this trap in action. A lawyer friend, raising two children alone while her daughter faced serious health issues, negotiated a 25% pay cut for more flexibility. Despite maintaining her full workload and delivering the same results while working more from home, that pay cut became permanent. Future raises were calculated from her reduced salary, compounding the penalty year after year.

Meanwhile, another friend’s male boss responded completely differently to her caregiving needs. “You participate and contribute more than anybody here. I know you’ll get the work done. Take whatever time you need.”

Same situation. Completely different outcomes.

The flexibility trap extends to hiring practices. Most larger firms refuse to consider part-time senior-level roles, demanding 60-plus-hour workweeks as the baseline for showing commitment. “We could hire more women who are highly competent, highly skilled,” Telka argues. She left her position partly because there was no opportunity to work part-time while caring for her son.

The hosts challenge the entire premise of equating hours with value. “The bragging should be, ‘’I’m still hugely successful, and I’ve only had to work ten hours this week because I’m so efficient,’'” Telka suggests. Instead, the profession celebrates whoever logs the most hours, regardless of actual accomplishments.

The Sponsorship Gap: Beyond Coffee and Advice

While firms love their mentorship programs, women need sponsorship, and there’s a crucial difference. Mentors give advice. Sponsors give opportunities.

“Women need advocates who promote them even when they’re not in the room,” Telka explains. This means giving them the opportunity to work with big clients, putting them forward for promotions, and actively using influence on their behalf.

The “feedback gap” shows how this plays out. Telka noticed that men at her firm received specific, actionable feedback: complete these certifications, lead this type of project, and you’ll be ready for promotion. Women got vague encouragement that sounded supportive but functioned as a career ceiling.

McClelland’s experience breaking into professional speaking illustrates the power of sponsorship. She had no idea what to charge and accepted far less than market rates. When Telka learned what McClelland was charging, her response was direct: “You need to charge a lot more.” That single conversation of transparent peer mentorship immediately increased McClelland’s earning potential. But sponsorship is that next step: vouching for her quality of work to professional connections who were ready to pay market rates.

Because women need more than peer support. They need people—espectially men—in leadership roles actively using their privilege for change. This means interrupting when women themselves are interrupted, questioning why Jennifer’s client portfolio is smaller than John’s, and advocating for women who aren’t in the room.

“Don’t wait for women to ask for a promotion,” McClelland urges. Women are far less likely to self-advocate, since they have been socialized to be “nice and kind and warm” rather than assertive. “Intentionally promote women. Just because they’re not asking doesn’t mean they’re not qualified or don’t deserve it.”

From Awareness to Action

The good news? Change is already happening. Jason Ackerman’s firm has achieved 80% women employees with equal gender representation in leadership. Some firms tie partner bonuses to diversity outcomes. A male partner who took paternity leave shifted his entire firm’s culture simply by modeling the behavior.

The solutions are practical and achievable:

  • Track account assignments to ensure equity
  • Stop asking for prior salaries that perpetuate pay gaps
  • Provide bias interruption training for everyone
  • Create revenue-sharing models that reward value over hours
  • Hire skilled women seeking part-time or flexible roles
  • Make pay ranges transparent within organizations
  • Model the behavior you want to see

Companies like Luma Accounting have incorporated policies like these into their firm culture with such successful results that they started the Women+Workplaces community to connect talented women seeking flexible work with firms smart enough to recognize that 30 brilliant hours beat 60 mediocre ones.

“Culture is created based on what we celebrate and what we reinforce,” Telka notes. The profession rewards visibility and hours logged… but it should be rewarding impact, innovation, and results.

The Business Case for Breaking the Glass

When firms lose half their talent pipeline to preventable cultural barriers, they lose experienced professionals who could transform their practices. Women who navigate personal challenges often become more adaptable, empathetic leaders.

“My personal family struggles have made me a much more resilient individual and a more compassionate person and leader,” Telka shares. McClelland agrees, noting that her medical challenges made her more understanding and better able to support her team.

Telka shared a quote from Michelle Obama, “Strong men, men who are truly role models, don’t need to put down women to make themselves feel powerful. People who are truly strong lift others up. People who are truly powerful bring others together.”

The leadership gap in accounting won’t close on its own. But with awareness, commitment, and intentional action from everyone—not just women—the profession can finally move beyond keeping women under glass.

Whether you’re running a firm or just starting your career, you have the power to be part of this shift. Listen to the full episode for more insights, strategies, and an honest conversation about creating real change in accounting.

The hosts also invite you to join the conversation on the She Counts LinkedIn page by sharing your own stories of workplace bias and solutions that work. Recognizing the glass ceiling is just the first step. Breaking it requires all of us.

The Business Case for Leading with Heart in a Numbers-Driven World

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Dawn Brolin’s accounting firm partners told her she was fat. They criticized her for wearing the same clothes repeatedly. And when she tore her meniscus at the gym, they made her drive herself to the hospital with explicit instructions to be at work the next morning.

This wasn’t a scene from a workplace horror story. This was real life for a CPA who would later become one of accounting’s most passionate advocates for empathetic leadership. In a recent episode of the She Counts podcast, Brolin opened up to hosts Nancy McClelland and Questian Telka about the raw experiences she shares in her new book, “The Elevation of Empathy,” revealing how toxic leadership nearly broke her, and ultimately shaped her understanding of what authentic leadership looks like.

What makes Brolin’s story particularly powerful is that she doesn’t just talk about being a victim of empathy-free leadership. She also admits to her own failures and how she learned to recover from them. Her journey shows embracing empathy as a strategic advantage, rather than hiding emotional intelligence to appear “tough enough,” creates stronger teams and better business outcomes.

Before we dive deeper, if this topic triggers any emotions or struggles you’re facing, there is help available. The Crisis Text Line offers confidential professional mental health assistance: just text HOME to 741741.

When Leadership Lacks Heart: The Partnership from Hell

Brolin’s partnership nightmare wasn’t just about bad bosses. It was a masterclass in how the absence of empathy destroys people and businesses from the inside out.

At the time, Brolin was one of three partners in the firm. She brought in most of the clients, and was working to support her young family as the primary breadwinner. She was genuinely excited about building something meaningful. Then reality hit.

“There was zero empathy in that firm,” Brolin recalls. “None whatsoever.”

Because Brolin wasn’t yet a CPA, her partners—both women—relegated her to answering phones and fetching lunch, despite her being the primary rainmaker. The real cruelty went deeper than professional dismissal. They systematically attacked her personally, criticizing her weight and mocking her clothing choices.

The gym incident is an image of empathy-free leadership: when Brolin tore her meniscus during a step aerobics class they’d all attended together, she found herself writhing in pain on the gym floor. Her partners’ response? Figure it out yourself.

“I somehow dragged myself down to the office, and now I need to get to the hospital,” Brolin remembers. “And they were like, ‘All right, well, you’re gonna have to drive yourself to the hospital and make sure you’re at work tomorrow morning.'”

With a torn meniscus.

This wasn’t leadership, it was systematic dehumanization. The partners were creating a culture where employees watched this treatment and learned that success meant crushing others. “I watched how they treated the employees,” Brolin explains. “It wasn’t just me.”

But Brolin made a crucial decision in that toxic environment. Instead of absorbing these behaviors as normal, she used the experience as a reverse blueprint. “I was never going to do that as an employer,” she realized.

When the Empathy Champion Falls Short: Brolin’s Coaching Confession

Here’s what makes Brolin’s story so honest and powerful: she advocates for empathy and admits when she’s failed at it herself.

As a softball coach known as “The Designated Motivator,” Brolin poured her soul into her players. She made it her mission to be inclusive, to make every kid feel appreciated and loved. Then three players transferred to another school.

“My empathy went out the window,” Brolin admits. “I was devastated that they left. I poured my soul into them, and I was like, ‘You’re leaving me.’”

Instead of considering why these kids might have needed to transfer, Brolin took it personally. She withdrew her care and support from them completely. “That was so wrong,” she reflects.

But here’s the beautiful part: Brolin recognized her mistake and fixed it. About a year later, she went to each of the three kids and apologized.

“I want you to know something. This is an epic fail on my part, not yours,” she told them. She gave them permission not to forgive her, making it clear the apology was about them, not about making herself feel better.

They forgave her. Now they text regularly.

“My point in saying that is, for those people who have been unempathetic to an individual, you can fix that,” Brolin explains. “You can go to a person, and admit you messed up.”

In short, empathy isn’t about being perfect. It’s about recognizing your failures, owning them, and doing better.

Empathy as Your Secret Business Weapon

The accounting profession has operated under a fundamental misunderstanding: that empathy equals weakness. Brolin’s experiences prove exactly the opposite.

“Empathy doesn’t mean you’re soft,” Brolin emphasizes. “As a matter of fact, I think it’s a superpower.”

The American Psychological Association defines empathy as understanding a person from their frame of reference rather than your own. This breaks down into two skills: cognitive empathy (logically understanding someone’s perspective) and emotional empathy (actually feeling what they feel).

In business terms, this translates to measurable advantages that accounting firms can’t ignore. The research is overwhelming: empathetic leaders drive stronger team performance, higher retention rates, sharper decision-making, increased innovation, and improved mental health across their organizations.

“When leaders have empathy, people gravitate to that leader more than they do to a leader who doesn’t have empathy,” Brolin explains.

Consider Brad Smith, former CEO of Intuit, who Brolin cites as one of her favorite leaders. At industry conferences, Smith would stop mid-stride when he saw familiar faces, remembering personal details about employees’ families and asking about their daughters’ college plans.

“That is a leader who has empathy, who cares about other people by his actions more than his words,” Brolin notes. “They don’t superficially care about you because it’s going to give them an advantage. They care about you because of you.”

Being appointed to a leadership position doesn’t automatically make someone a leader. True leadership requires the ability to connect with and understand the people you’re leading. When your employees trust that you see them as whole humans rather than just billable resources, they bring their full creative potential to work.

The Burden Women Carry (And Why Men Need to Step Up Too)

Women in accounting firms often carry the invisible emotional labor of our workplaces. According to a 2023 Deloitte report, 51% of women say they’re expected to manage team wellbeing, compared to only 27% of men.

Telka knows this intimately. “I think about things like birthday gifts for colleagues or cards that have to be signed or someone’s ill and they need to be sent flowers,” she explains. “It often fell on me, probably because I was the most empathetic. The men were never the ones who were driving those situations.”

McClelland captures this perfectly with her favorite greeting card: “The front of the card says, ‘Happy birthday, from us.’ Inside: ‘But I think you know who went out and bought the card and wrote it and addressed it—and who just put the stamp on it.’”

But Brolin believes many men in the industry are more empathetic than we realize. “They’re just not being intentional about it,” she says. Take Randy Crabtree, who wrote the foreword to Brolin’s book, or Mike Paine, who told Telka, “I really want to help women in the field. Help me understand what the problem is and tell me what I can do, then I’m here for it.”

“And that’s empathy,” McClelland points out. “That is empathy right there.”

Learning to Accept What You Give: The Hardest Lesson

For Brolin, one of the biggest challenges has been learning to accept empathy, not just give it.

“People think because I keep going, I don’t hurt,” Brolin shares. “Let me be very clear. I hurt, and I keep going.”

Women leaders often become so focused on caring for others that they struggle to let others care for them. When Kellie Parks called after reading Brolin’s vulnerable Mother’s Day post, Brolin’s instinct was to deflect and hang up quickly.

Instead, she made a conscious choice to receive Parks’ empathy. “I let myself listen to what Kellie had to say and gave some space in my soul.”

McClelland offered Brolin a reframe that many women leaders need to hear: “Would you want me to hide my pain to protect you?” When Brolin said of course not, McClelland continued, “It’s an honor to have you turn to me when you need help. So if you ask for help, you’re showing us the same respect.”

As McClelland puts it, the goal is “unconditional love, but conditional involvement”—staying open to authentic connection while maintaining boundaries about what treatment you’ll accept.

Practical Tools for Building Your Empathy Muscle

Brolin offers specific practices for developing empathy as a leadership skill:

  • Practice mindfulness to build awareness. When you talk to someone, be truly present in that conversation. This is especially challenging at conferences with distractions everywhere, but it’s worth the effort.
  • Ask questions without making assumptions. Go into conversations with a blank slate rather than preconceived notions about what someone will say. As Telka notes, “Most of the time if I don’t make assumptions, things turn out much more positively.”
  • Pay attention to nonverbal cues. What are people not saying out-loud that you should consider asking about?
  • Ask for feedback. Be vulnerable enough to say, “This scenario happened with this client. What could we have done differently? Was it something I should have done that I didn’t do?”

Remember, as Brolin’s softball story shows, empathy can be learned and relearned. You can unlearn behaviors that hurt others. Most people aren’t out to hurt others. They’ve just learned harmful patterns that they can change.

Your Empathy Is Revolutionary

Brolin’s journey from victim of empathy-free leadership to champion of emotional intelligence demonstrates that our profession’s future depends on leaders who understand that strength and compassion are partners in creating sustainable success.

Empathetic leadership drives measurable results through higher retention, stronger teams, sharper decision-making, and improved mental health. In an industry grappling with talent shortages and burnout, leaders who can authentically connect with their teams while driving results are essential for survival.

Women in accounting must reject false choices. You don’t have to choose between empathy and strength, between caring and competence. Your emotional intelligence is your competitive advantage.

As Audre Lorde reminds us, “Caring for others doesn’t make you weak. It makes you dangerous to systems built on indifference.”

Ready to hear Brolin’s complete journey and discover more tools for empathetic leadership? Listen to the full She Counts episode to learn how to turn your emotional intelligence into your greatest professional asset. The future of accounting depends on leaders brave enough to lead with both their heads and their hearts, and you’re uniquely positioned to show the way.

This Forbes Top 200 CPA Says Sponsors Matter More Than Mentors

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Picture this: You’re sitting across from a potential client—an older gentleman who seems kind and polite. Your expertise fills the room, your credentials speak for themselves, but throughout the entire meeting, he keeps calling you “darling.” Not your name. Just “darling.”

This experience happened to Nicole Davis, founder of Conscious Accounting (formerly Butler Davis) and a Forbes Top 200 CPA. For Davis, who’s originally from Georgia, where terms like “honey” and “sweetheart” are common, it wasn’t about being offended. It was about something deeper.

“Since we’re in a professional setting, I’m like, ‘you need to call me by my name,’” Davis explains. “When some men see a pretty face or just women in general, they kind of tend to sidestep our expertise.”

Sound familiar? If you’ve worked in accounting, tax, or bookkeeping for any length of time, you’ve probably been there. That moment when your face is seen, but your capabilities somehow become invisible. It’s why a recent episode of the She Counts podcast bears the title “Don’t Call Me Darling,” and why Nicole’s response to these moments is a masterclass in redefining professional power.

When Power Looks Different Than Expected

Davis’s journey to commanding respect didn’t happen overnight. Despite her current reputation for dominating whatever room she enters, she admits something that might surprise you: “I am highly introverted. People think I’m not because I can turn on. But as quickly as I turn it on, I can turn it off.”

Early in her corporate career, Davis bought into traditional definitions of power. “Early in my career when I worked in corporate America, I thought power meant title, power meant that corner office, power meant I’m calling the shots and I’m telling people what to do.”

But when she started her own firm, that facade crumbled. What emerged was something far more powerful. “Real power isn’t in a title. Real power isn’t in how much money you have. Real power is when you own who you are, and you make everyone else also accept that person.”

The catalyst for this shift? Representation. Davis’s boss at the Federal Home Loan Bank, Michelle, was the first Black woman she’d ever worked for. “When I started working for her, my eyes started to open. I started to see myself like a boss, but I didn’t see the path to get there as a Black woman, because all I saw was white men.”

This speaks to something we don’t talk about enough in our profession. When you don’t see people who look like you in positions of power, it’s hard to imagine yourself there. As co-host Nancy McClelland admits, “When I hear the word ‘doctor,’ I presume it’s a white male. Now, that is just absolutely ridiculous. It’s these deep-seated institutional societal biases we all have.”

For Davis, seeing Michelle changed everything. It showed her there was a path and more importantly, she could define what that path looked like.

Redefining What Domination Really Means

When Davis talks about “dominating” spaces, she’s not talking about aggression or making others small. “Dominating means agency. It means I am calling the shots. I’m writing my own tickets, I’m making the rules. I am doing things my way.”

But here’s the part that gave podcast co-host McClelland chills: “Dominating is not about making men small, right? Dominating is about making the space honest enough for all of us to fit into it.”

This isn’t about rejecting collaboration or building walls. It’s about what Davis calls “owning your story so completely that the room moves to your rhythm. I’m not moving to theirs.”

Learning to do this required Davis to develop boundaries that she calls “non-negotiables.” “I set boundaries and I set them fast with people,” she says. The key is being “warm but firm.”

As Davis explains, “People think you have to walk into a room and be the loudest person there to show you’re significant. No, you don’t. You walk into a room and you’re just there. Your presence says way more than words you could ever speak or say.”

This kind of presence requires something many women in accounting struggle with: refusing to shrink ourselves to make others comfortable. But when you do it right, something magical happens. Davis describes authenticity as working “a lot like Wi-Fi” because “people in range of you being who you are get that signal and they log into theirs.”

In other words, when you show up authentically, you give others permission to do the same.

Technology: The Great Equalizer

One area where Davis sees a massive opportunity for women is technology, specifically AI. Her philosophy? “Buddy up with the bots.”

“AI is making a grand stand in our profession, and so many people still have not latched on to it yet,” Davis observes. But here’s where women have an advantage. “Women have mastered efficiency out of necessity. Women are perfectly positioned to make a big major splash in the tech industry.”

Davis describes AI as acting like “a tireless junior associate” that “never needs to take a vacation. They never get tired. They can do all the things you really don’t want to do from an administrative standpoint, possibly from an analytical standpoint.”

This is about layering technology with relationship-building, and it’s something women excel at.

This approach has allowed Davis to build her firm primarily through relationships rather than traditional sales tactics. “I built my firm strictly on relationships,” she says. “I just kept taking care of my current clients and adding more services to what they needed.”

The result? A practice designed around her values rather than traditional expectations, what she calls achieving true freedom through strategic use of technology.

The Power of Sponsorship vs. Mentorship

While many people focus on finding mentors, Davis believes sponsorship is more critical. “Mentors guide, but sponsors vouch.” This concept was a key inspiration to co-host Questian Telka in her initial creation of the She Counts podcast.

Davis’ own story illustrates this perfectly. In 2020, Jeff Drew from the AICPA reached out about the practitioners planning committee. “I had no idea this committee existed,” Davis admits. But Drew’s sponsorship opened doors she didn’t know were there, eventually leading to her current role as committee chair.

“Sponsors rewrite the guest list for you so your name is on it,” Davis explains. “And when you’re on the list, your mentors help you stay on the list and guide you as you go through your journey.”

This distinction matters because it shows sometimes the biggest barrier isn’t our capability; it’s visibility. Sponsors help solve that problem by putting your name in rooms where decisions are made.

From Spaces Not Built for Us

When asked about spaces traditionally dominated by men, Davis counters, “What space was ever built for me?”

It’s a powerful question that reframes the entire conversation. Rather than trying to fit into existing structures, Davis has consistently created her own path, from starting her accounting firm to launching a construction company.

“Who said women can’t wear heels and then put on some steel-toed boots in the same week?” she asks with characteristic wit.

This mindset shift, from asking for permission to creating opportunities, separates true leaders from those still waiting for someone else to open doors.

Getting Out of Your Own Head

Davis’s advice for women wanting to take up more space is, “Take it. I know we haven’t touched on this a lot, but stamp out imposter syndrome. You’re not an imposter.”

Her approach involves speaking life into your goals. “Say it out-loud. Say it to yourself in the mirror. Say, ‘I am a badass speaker. I am an exceptional accountant. I know how to do this, this, and this.’ Even if you don’t know how to do it, say it anyway. Because eventually your mind is going to start believing it, and eventually your actions start following what your mind believes.”

It’s about recognizing that you’ve already proven yourself. “You wouldn’t have gotten this far without knowing anything. You know something. Use that to level you up.”

The Ripple Effect

Davis’s journey from being called “darling” to being recognized as a Forbes Top 200 CPA represents something bigger than individual success: cultural transformation.

When women refuse to shrink themselves, when they set boundaries while maintaining warmth, when they leverage technology to create more inclusive practices, they create ripple effects that extend far beyond their immediate sphere.

As Davis puts it, authenticity becomes “a permission slip” for everyone around you. Refusing to apologize for taking up space permits others to do the same.

In the accounting profession, technology is challenging traditional power structures and changing client expectations. There’s a new generation of professionals who refuse to accept “that’s how it’s always been done” as an answer.

Women like Davis are leading this transformation, not by playing by the old rules, but by writing new ones. They prove you don’t need to adopt masculine models of authority to command respect, and you don’t need to diminish others to demonstrate your strength.

Every boundary you set, every authentic moment you choose over conformity, every time you refuse to make yourself small, you give the next generation permission to thrive.

Because the world needs more women who understand that true domination isn’t about making others small. It’s about being so genuinely powerful that everyone around you gets permission to thrive.

Ready to transform how you show up in your professional spaces? Listen to the full She Counts episode to hear more of Davis’s insights and discover specific strategies you can implement immediately.