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She Counts

From Frustrated Firm Owner to Tech Founder Without Writing a Single Line of Code

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Thirty-three percent. That’s how much time Judie McCarthy’s bookkeeping firm was spending chasing clients for information instead of doing accounting or advising on business decisions. Just sending requests, following up, and tracking down the same documents week after week.

The breaking point came on a Friday afternoon when one of Judie’s biggest clients called, furious. “The bookkeeper is harassing me for the same information over and over again,” she said, demanding a new bookkeeper. Judie talked her off the ledge that afternoon, promising to investigate Monday morning.

But when she reviewed the email thread with her team, the problem wasn’t the bookkeeper. It was the system, or rather, the lack of one. They were sending emails with multiple questions each week. Clients would respond but never answer everything, starting the cycle all over again.

When Judie called the client back to explain what she’d found, the phone went silent. “I thought, oh, she’s hung up on me,” Judie recalls. “And I realized she was crying.” The client, a high-powered woman running two businesses, wasn’t angry anymore. She was overwhelmed. “It is so hard to keep up with everything,” she said through tears.

That conversation changed everything. This wasn’t a difficult client; it was a horrible client experience and none of the existing tools were solving it.

In this episode of She Counts, hosts Nancy McClelland and Questian Telka sit down with Judie, co-founder of Client Hub, a company that notably doesn’t use titles, reflecting their values of collaboration over hierarchy. After 25 years running a successful bookkeeping practice and a previous career in automotive management, Judie built the practice management software she wished existed. And her experience offers a roadmap for any woman in accounting who’s ever thought, “There has to be a better way.”

The Problem Nobody Wanted to Name

The idea for Client Hub didn’t start with Judie at all. It came from her lead bookkeeper during a regular team meeting.

“We were always trying to be really productive, looking for ways to increase productivity and deliver better client experience,” Judie recalls. “We’re going around the room and my lead bookkeeper said our biggest challenge is getting the information we need from our clients to do the work.”

The statement hit hard. Everyone knew it was true, but hearing it said out loud changed something. Judie’s team decided to measure the problem. Their mini research study revealed that staggering 33% figure. A full third of their time was going to administrative chase-downs rather than actual accounting work.

“There are lots of great internal workflow tools on the market,” Judie explains. “But our internal workflow wasn’t the biggest challenge. It was that external workflow.”

After that crying phone call with her client, they tried to solve it together. The client suggested sending one email for everything. Judie knew that wouldn’t work. They’d just have the same conversation about too many emails. So they created a shared Google Sheet where the client could answer all questions weekly.

“That didn’t last two weeks,” Judie says. “This was when I thought there has to be a better way. And there really weren’t any good tools on the market at that time.”

From Frustrated User to Unlikely Founder

The jump from identifying a problem to building software isn’t obvious, especially for someone without recent coding experience. Judie had been a software developer in the 1980s, but as she jokes, “Code is much different now. We’re working on Windows now, not DOS systems. I couldn’t write code to save my life right now.”

What she did have was connections and a clear understanding of the problem. Through a mutual friend, she met her future business partner, an experienced product manager who wasn’t necessarily looking to build accounting software either.

“We were talking about different software projects,” Judie says. “It just came to fruition that we were really well aligned on this idea.”

For four months, they just talked. Judie created a PowerPoint presentation outlining her vision. They compared notes, did market research with their networks, asking the crucial question: “If we build it, will they buy it?”

“It probably wasn’t until six, seven, eight months in that we said, hey, let’s make this a business,” Judie recalls. “We didn’t have to do it all up front.”

When they were ready to build, fortune smiled again. Her partner found two developers looking for work. Those developers are still with Client Hub today, eight years later. That kind of team stability is almost unheard of in tech startups.

The Hardest Part: Letting Go of What You Built

For two years, Judie juggled both businesses, running her practice while building Client Hub. But eventually, something had to give.

“It finally took me about two years to really wrap my head around the idea of selling my practice,” Judie admits. The hesitation wasn’t just about steady income versus startup uncertainty. “Many of my clients had been with me for over 20 years. A lot of them were almost like family.”

Nancy and Questian immediately understood this tension. When they faced emotional paralysis making decisions about the podcast, Questian told Nancy, “We just have to think like a man.” The comment was partly joking, but it pointed to something real about how women often consider relationship impacts in business decisions.

“As women, because we’re often caretakers, relationships are so important to us,” Judie observes. “A man selling a practice probably wouldn’t think so much about that. They’re like, ‘I’m going to get rid of this practice, take the biggest payout, and go.’”

When Judie finally decided to sell, she approached it with characteristic attention to relationships. The broker’s initial ad copy was “absolutely horrendous—typical accounting, all about the numbers, nothing about what the practice was.” She rewrote it herself to attract tech-forward firms that valued client experience.

The response was overwhelming. She received 20 offers at or above asking price within 24 hours. But after interviewing several candidates, Judie chose the lowest bidder.

“Within ten minutes of the start of that conversation, I knew he was the one,” she says of the Texas firm owner who bought her practice. “Everything about the offer and the transition planning and how he ran his firm, it felt more like a family firm.”

The transition showed just how embedded Client Hub had become in her clients’ workflows. When Judie and the buyer announced the sale together via Zoom, her lead bookkeeper of eight years went quiet, then asked, “I don’t have to give up using Client Hub, do I?”

“I said, we’ve been together eight years and you’re worried about giving up your tech, not losing me?” Judie laughs. One of her clients asked the same question during their meeting.

The Surprisingly Simple Path to Building Something New

For anyone sitting on an idea, Judie offers practical and decidedly non-technical advice.

Write Everything Down Immediately

“I have a whiteboard on my desk,” Judie says. “Whenever something comes to mind, I jot it down because otherwise I’ll forget it in about five minutes.”

Questian laughed in recognition, “As soon as you walk through a doorway, it just goes poof out of my mind.”

Stop Worrying About Idea Theft

“Don’t be afraid that somebody’s going to steal your idea,” Judie emphasizes. “Chances are somebody’s not going to steal it and run. I’ve never heard of that happening.”

Instead, she encourages talking to everyone. “Firm owners reach out to me all the time saying, ‘Hey, I have an idea. Would you mind if I bounce it off you?’”

Launch Before You’re Ready

When Client Hub was approaching release, Judie kept hesitating. “It’s not ready, it’s not ready.”

Then Laura Redmond from Aero Workflow gave her the advice that changed everything: “It will never be ready.”

“Thank you, Laura,” Judie says now. She’s internalized this so deeply that she sometimes pushes her product team to release features before they feel complete. “Let’s let our customers tell us what more it needs instead of us building what we think it needs.”

You Don’t Need What You Think You Need

“People think you need investors and a marketing company to build a software company,” Judie says. “You don’t. It is a big investment because you’re going to be paying developers eventually, but just get started.”

Client Hub has grown organically, without outside funding, staying true to its original vision while evolving from a simple portal to a full practice management solution with internal workflow, file management, and integrations with QuickBooks, Xero, Anchor, and more.

Breaking Through the Real Barriers

When asked about obstacles she faced as a woman entering tech, Judie’s answer surprised even the hosts.

“I never saw barriers in anything I did,” she says. “I never walked into a room full of men and thought, ‘Oh, I’m the only woman here.’ I’m an equal.”

She credits this mindset to her mother, who passed when Judie was just 22. “She was my greatest champion. She always told me there were no limits to what I could do or who I could become.”

This outlook carried Judie through careers in automotive management, bookkeeping, and now technology—all traditionally male-dominated fields. But she’s quick to acknowledge reality. “I know a lot of women do experience barriers. I don’t want people to think I’m saying there aren’t barriers, because there are. You just need to find your way around them, just like a traffic jam.”

The tech ecosystem has been surprisingly welcoming. “I’ve never met any of my male counterparts in this profession that I didn’t feel had respect for me as an equal,” she says. “They want talent. It doesn’t matter if you’re male, female, black, white, Asian, gay, straight. People nowadays, especially in technology, we are just very welcoming.”

Perhaps most importantly, Judie operates from a different fear calculation than most. “I’m the kind of person who is never afraid to try because the thought of regret or what-would-have-been really scares me,” she explains. “I don’t ever want to regret that I did or did not do anything in my life.”

And through it all, she maintains perspective with humor. “I don’t know why I wasn’t voted class clown,” she jokes. “Maybe don’t take yourself so seriously. Roll with it.”

This philosophy extends to Client Hub’s company culture, from their no-titles policy to their biweekly “happy hours” where customers gather informally to network, laugh, and share feedback that shapes product development.

The Legacy of Solving Your Own Problem

Today, Client Hub is more than the simple portal Judie first envisioned. But it stays true to its original mission: helping firms get work done without friction.

“People ask us to implement something like time and billing,” Judie explains. “For us, it was the perfect opportunity to partner with somebody.” They integrated with Anchor rather than building their own billing solution. “We need to keep it simple.”

This focus means saying no to features that don’t serve the core vision, even if they might be profitable. It means listening more than talking, a skill Judie learned in automotive management training decades ago. “The most important communication skill you have is listening.”

When asked what she hopes her presence as a female tech founder represents, Judie’s answer was immediate. “I hope my presence shows the next generation that their passions, ideas, and creativity belong here.”

The message applies to any woman considering a significant professional leap. Don’t let anything or anyone hold you back—not parents, partners, or that one person who says it’s not a great idea.

Your Problem Is Someone Else’s Too

Judie’s story proves that the best solutions come from problems you live with daily. A bookkeeper frustrated by wasted time became a tech founder because she couldn’t ignore the problem anymore.

Listen to the full episode, which Nancy closed with a quote from Rear Admiral Grace Hopper, developer of the first compiler for computer programming: “Humans are allergic to change. They love to say we’ve always done it this way. I try to fight that.”

Women like Judie show us we don’t have to bend ourselves around broken systems. We can build better ones instead.

Sometimes, we have to create the tools we need. So write down that idea, share it with someone, and start before you’re ready.

Join the conversation: Have you ever come up with an idea for a new app? What has prevented you from pursuing it? Or if you have pursued it, share that with us too. Follow the She Counts Podcast LinkedIn page and share your story under this episode.

The Voice That Told You to Stay Quiet Wasn’t Yours

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What if the biggest roadblock in your career path isn’t a lack of skills or experience, but the voice in your head that’s been telling you to stay quiet since you were a little girl?

That voice is familiar to many women in accounting, tax, and bookkeeping. It’s the one that whispers “don’t brag” when you land a major client. It suggests you “soften” your opinion in the board meeting. It convinces you that speaking up will somehow offend someone. Most of us inherited this voice through years of well-meaning feedback that taught us to make ourselves smaller.

In a recent episode of the She Counts podcast, hosts Nancy McClelland and Questian Telka tackle this topic head-on with special guest Misty Megia. Misty is the CEO and creative force behind Theatre of Public Speaking, where she helps women and underrepresented voices unmute themselves, whether in a conference room, a technical breakout session, or a keynote spotlight. Nancy and Questian are proud graduates of her TOPS program and can speak about the transformation from their firsthand experience.

The trio discussed how to reclaim the voices we’ve learned to silence, and it doesn’t involve generic confidence mantras or vague advice to “just think positive.” Real change comes from understanding why our brains cling to negativity in the first place, building specific action plans that outsmart procrastination and fear, surrounding ourselves with people who tell us the truth, and recognizing that self-promotion isn’t ego; it’s service to the people who need exactly what we have to offer.

The Power of Building Your Dream One Step at a Time

Misty opens the episode with a story. While working on a film in Armenia, she asked the director for advice about making a documentary. “I hate documentaries,” the director replied. “And while we’re at it, I’m not a fan of rom coms either.”

The twist? They were literally filming a rom-com at that moment.

The director explained that her real dream was to make a sci-fi film she’d written. But she knew she wasn’t ready. So she made documentaries first to learn how to tell stories and frame scenes. Then she wrote the rom-com they were filming because it was “a massive playground and the stakes were low, but the lessons were high.”

“Watching a woman who fully owned the climb,” Misty reflects. “Not waiting for permission, not waiting to be ready, not apologizing for learning. She was building her dream, one imperfect moment at a time.”

The lesson hit Misty hard. “We often wait to begin until we are an expert. But we need to begin because that’s how we become an expert.”

Understanding What’s Keeping You Muted

Before you can reclaim your voice, you need to understand what silenced it in the first place and why your brain makes it so hard to break free.

When Misty talks about “unmuting,” she’s not just referring to the moment you turn on your microphone in a Zoom call. “There are so many components in our life that are muscles we need to constantly exercise, whether it’s our creativity, how we show up in a space, or how we support one another,” she explains. “To me, that’s the act of unmuting. What do we dream of doing? And what steps do we need to take to move toward that dream?”

Nancy keeps a Post-it note next to her computer (right beside the one reminding her of the cost of goods sold formula) that reads, “Be the best version of yourself you can be. But who is that?” That question is crucial. “It reminds me to make sure it’s my own definition of who I am,” Nancy explains. “It’s easy to get lost and start being who we think the world wants us to be.”

The muting happened gradually for Questian. “When I was really young, I was very, very vocal, very outspoken,” she shares. She beat all the boys in pull-ups in elementary school. She was “born a feminist,” convinced she could do anything. But somewhere along the way, the feedback started coming. “You are bothering other people. You have to say things in a certain way as a woman so you don’t upset someone or offend them.”

By the time she joined Misty’s program, Questian was “absolutely terrified to go into a Zoom meeting or conference and have a conversation with someone.”

There’s a scientific reason those negative messages stick so hard. “Our mind is wired to keep us safe, and that negative comment can be perceived as a threat,” Misty explains. “Your mind thinks it’s unsafe, so it circles around it like crazy to figure out how to be safe.”

But what makes the situation even more complicated is that the systems around us compound these struggles. Men experience imposter syndrome too, but they tend to move through it faster. She shares a telling example of a male head of sales who was competing against a woman with more experience for a VP role. Despite his “massive anxiety,” he got the job because the hiring committee saw themselves in him.

“We internalize a lot of the external conversations,” Misty observes. “How did those even become internal conversations? We weren’t born with that.”

Building Your Action Plan for Breaking Through

Understanding why you’re muted is important, but your brain needs more than awareness. It needs concrete action.

“A lot of people say just start thinking positive. Just think happy, joyful thoughts and counteract it,” Misty says. “That is so difficult. Your body and your mind are so much better when they have a specific action to take.”

When Misty finds herself stuck on a presentation, procrastinating instead of working, she has a diagnostic process. She asks herself, Is it the people making her nervous? Is it her skill set? Does she lack confidence in how she’ll show up? Or is it the overall situation causing anxiety?

“Once I have an action plan, because I’ve focused on where that anxiety is coming from, then I can move forward and I stop procrastinating,” she explains. Often she’ll discover something specific. “I don’t feel strong about my opener. Let me fix that.”

The procrastination itself becomes information. For Misty, it’s housework. Suddenly, folding laundry seems urgent. For Questian, it’s doomscrolling. “I’ll be working and my brain will just come to a moment where I stop, and then all of a sudden I find myself on my phone.”

Nancy, who describes herself as a “cognitive behavioral therapy nerd,” points out that you have to notice yourself being in anxiety before you can address it. “You have to notice that it’s happening, which takes a lot of practice and honestly, a lot of friends who can see it in you.”

Misty shares two powerful techniques for reframing negative self-talk:

  1. The Best Friend Technique. When negative self-talk starts, Misty literally names it after her best friend Christina. “To me, she’s my biggest supporter. She’s my cheerleader. She also will give it to me honestly if I’m not doing something right.” Christina would never say the brutal things that inner voice dishes out. “We truly talk to ourselves worse than we would talk to our best friend.”
  2. The Childhood Photo Technique. Years ago, Misty took a class that had participants put a picture of themselves as a child next to their bed. “Anytime we had that negative self-talk, we would see our younger self and go, ‘Would you say that to this little girl?”‘ The protective instinct kicks in immediately.

Questian loves this approach. “We’re all still that little girl inside, right?” And as Misty points out, that little girl “would be so impressed with how far you’ve made it, who couldn’t even dream of where you are and what you’re doing.”

Sometimes, hitting bottom provides the clearest view. Questian shares that after a year of family challenges, loss, and professional setbacks with nonprofits losing funding, she recently told someone, “I feel like a failure.”

But the next day, she had clarity. “Here are the things I have to take a step back from,” she told Nancy. “I need to do it so I can focus on these other areas.”

“You got clarity when you saw that low point happen,” Nancy observed. “If those things are really the most important to you, then you need to focus on those.”

The reframe matters. Failure becomes information about what needs to change.

The Power of Community and Authentic Self-Promotion

Individual techniques can transform how you handle fear and self-doubt. But the people you surround yourself with are the accelerator.

“If you surround yourself with people who believe in you and think you are the sun, moon and stars, then that will be contagious to you. And it’s based in reality because they see the work you put in,” Misty explains. “If you surround yourself with doubters, then that’s what you start to believe.”

The key phrase is “based in reality.” This isn’t about empty cheerleading. Nancy demonstrates authentic support when she tells Questian, “You wrote that 100-minute session for the main stage at the Women Who Count conference on sexual harassment. You changed lives. I have no doubt that you changed lives with that.”

Questian knows Nancy means it because, as she puts it, “You will tell me if I’m full of shit.”

Now for the uncomfortable part: self-promotion.

“I know for the podcast to be successful, for Ask a CPA to be successful, for the work I’m doing as a public speaker to be successful, I need to self-promote,” Nancy admits. “But I am turned off by self-promotion. It’s icky.”

Questian adds, “We were told when we were little girls, don’t brag. You’re not allowed to brag. Don’t talk about yourself too much.”

“There are so many people out there to tell you no. Do not be the first one to say it,” Misty says, offering a powerful reframe. You’re not promoting to everyone. “You’re doing it for that one person who needs your services. They need to hear what you have to say on this podcast. They need that little bit of validation to say, ‘I can do this too.'”

When Nancy and Questian promote She Counts, they’re saying, “Hey, there’s a space for you where you count.” That’s not self-promotion; it’s service.

Self-affirmation needs evidence, though. “We don’t take enough proof points that we didn’t die doing something,” Misty points out. You posted on social media and didn’t die. You presented to the board and didn’t die. Each survival is data your brain needs.

The final lesson is to stop copying others. “We are such unique individuals. Every single one of us brings something totally different to the table,” Misty says. “Yet any time we want to show up, we want to look at who else was successful and follow that to the T so much that we forget our own voice.”

Instead, she’s taking an upholstery class and consuming content outside her niche, finding what excites her so she can bring something authentically new to her work.

Your Turn to Unmute

Questian’s transformation tells us what’s possible. She went from being terrified to speak in a Zoom meeting to presenting to 400 people on a main stage (twice). “Now I won’t shut up,” she jokes. But that’s not a problem. It’s proof that unmuting works.

The conversation makes several things clear:

  • Unmuting is about becoming who you want to be, not who others expect
  • Your brain’s negativity bias isn’t broken; it’s overprotective
  • Vague positivity doesn’t work; you need specific action plans
  • How you talk to yourself matters. Would you say those things to your childhood self?
  • Real community provides honest feedback and genuine support
  • Self-promotion serves those who need what you offer

Brené Brown, whom Nancy recently met at Intuit Connect (and gave a She Counts pin!), puts it perfectly: “When we screw up or fall down, many of us talk to ourselves in ways that we would never talk to someone we love and respect. Talking to ourselves from self-love and self-respect is a practice.”

Your homework is to notice when your inner critic pipes up and answer it the way you’d answer your best friend.

If you’re ready to start your unmuting journey, Misty’s Theatre of Public Speaking women’s cohort starts the first Wednesday of March, and seats are already half full. There’s also a beginner’s course for those who need foundational help before jumping into live sessions.

Listen to the full episode for the complete conversation, including the vulnerable moments, practical techniques, and the kind of honest talk that makes She Counts a valuable resource for women in accounting.

Beyond the Policy Binder: Building Workplaces Where Women Actually Feel Safe

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“I ended up leaving that company by choice because I did not feel comfortable with him still there,” audience member Kimberly shared, her voice steady but carrying the weight of a difficult decision. “I didn’t want to go to court. But if I prevented this from happening to anyone else, that was enough for me to speak up so I could prevent some other young woman from ever going through that again.”

This powerful moment came during Part Two of a special She Counts podcast episode, recorded live on the main stage at the Accounting & Financial Women’s Alliance (AFWA) Women Who Count conference. Hosts Nancy McClelland and Questian Telka called it their best episode yet, bringing together employment attorney Kami Hoskins and HR expert Julie Thiel for an unfiltered two-hour CPE session about sexual harassment in accounting.

“Seeing all those faces in the audience and hearing from women who’ve been directly impacted by sexual harassment, it was everything I hoped it would be,” Nancy reflected. The discussion tackled the issue from multiple angles, including employees facing uncomfortable situations, employers trying to build better cultures, and small business owners managing client relationships.

The Real Goal is to Stop the Behavior, Not Destroy Careers

One revelation from the session was understanding what actually happens when somebody reports harassment. Many women fear reporting because they don’t want to destroy someone’s career or face retaliation.

“The goal of a good investigation is for the behavior to stop,” Kami explained. “It’s not to put the person in the public square and flog them. It’s not to cause them physical harm or to embarrass or shame them. It’s to stop the behavior.”

Sometimes extreme behavior requires termination. But often, intervention works, behavior stops, and everyone moves forward. This reframing matters because reporting helps create a workplace where everyone can do their jobs.

Harassment from clients and vendors matters just as much as harassment from coworkers. Julie emphasized that protection extends beyond your own company walls. “You are protected both within your company and in how you’re interacting with others as well,” she said. The investigation process and standards don’t change because the harasser works elsewhere.

When Nancy asked how many audience members were managers or supervisors, about 80% raised their hands. This matters because supervisors are legally obligated to report harassment they witness or hear about, even if the affected employee hasn’t complained.

“The supervisor can get the message to the Human Resources department,” Kami noted. “It doesn’t have to be the employees themselves. It’s on all of us to make sure that information gets to this function.”

Simple Words That Stop Bad Behavior

The experts shared surprisingly simple strategies for interrupting inappropriate behavior before it escalates. You don’t need a confrontational script or perfect comeback.

“It’s always easier to interrupt bad behaviors when they’re sort of lower level,” Kami explained. When someone makes a weird comment or inappropriate joke, small responses like “What?,” “That was weird,” “Awkward,” or even a pointed look can work.

Julie’s favorite intervention might be the most powerful: “What did you mean by that?”

“Often, people aren’t really thinking deeply about what they’re saying,” Julie explained. “That question gives them a pause to reflect again.”

Nancy shared a story that showed exactly why these tools matter. At an accounting conference earlier in the year, a woman made an extremely inappropriate sexual comment to a man in front of a group. The comment was so explicit Nancy wouldn’t repeat it on air.

“We were all just stunned,” Nancy recalled. “If a man had said that to a woman, there is just no way they would have gotten away with it. But we were just all so stunned because it was a woman saying it to a man. None of us knew what to say.”

Looking back, “What did you mean by that?” would have been perfect. Instead, Nancy managed only “Awkward,” which, the experts agreed, also works.

Julie noted that conferences pose particular risks. “When people are relaxed and in informal settings, those are often the situations where they make bad decisions.” Her advice is to stay self-aware. Check in with yourself about how you feel and whether anyone seems uncomfortable.

Culture Beats Policy Every Time

The most powerful moment came when another audience member, Katie, shared her experience at a nonprofit healthcare company. Despite being almost all women with male leadership, everyone felt comfortable because of one consistent practice.

“They called it the tone from the top,” Katie explained. “Every single meeting started with a tone at the top, coming from the board members and from the executive leadership.”

Even during days with 13 budget meetings, each one began with acknowledging company values and recognizing someone who exemplified them. This wasn’t performative; it was how the organization operated.

Kami shared why this works. “I don’t think leaders understand how often employees need to hear the message. It’s not something that you can hear once a year or twice a year. Employees need repetition.”

The discussion revealed a critical gap in leadership training in most organizations. “Most leaders get put into leadership positions without any training,” Julie observed. “It’s like, ‘Good luck in the deep end of the pool!’”

Nancy illustrated this with a story from her husband’s job at Microsoft. A colleague discovered he’d been promoted to manager when someone said, “I guess I report to you now.” An email had announced it to his new team, but nobody had told him first.

“You’re taking somebody who’s an introverted software developer who’s very good at technical work, and now he is managing people,” Nancy said. These preparation gaps contribute to cultures where harassment can flourish.

Real Questions, Real Challenges

The audience Q&A highlighted the complex realities women face. An anonymous question asked about an executive who had asked if her “boobs were fake.” She never reported him because of his position.

“Any comments about anyone’s body for any reason are not cool,” Julie responded firmly. Kami added that while a judge or jury determines if something legally constitutes harassment, it’s clearly “problematic behavior that should not have happened.”

For those fearing powerful harassers, Kami noted many employers have anonymous ethics helplines. “Having been on the inside of a legal department, I can tell you a lot of work goes into maintaining anonymity.”

Michelle, a volunteer firefighter, raised another challenge: inadequate investigations in volunteer organizations. She described a situation where someone was falsely accused, and the accused faced immediate threats of expulsion before any investigation.

“That’s why that investigation is so critical,” Kami responded. “We want to do good fact-gathering before we make decisions about what to do next.”

Kimberly asked about the “he said, she said” problem, when harassment happens privately with no witnesses or proof. “How do you prove that?” she asked, describing her own experience reporting someone in power.

“If there’s no reason for me not to believe you, I would still address it,” Julie reassured her. She explained that HR’s job is to remain neutral and hold everyone accountable. Even without proof, strategies exist to ensure behavior doesn’t continue, such as never being alone with that person again, check-ins, and accountability measures.

“If there’s no proof, it’s hard to win in court,” Kami acknowledged. “But that doesn’t mean there aren’t a whole other universe of resolutions available to ensure the behavior stops.”

Resources for Every Organization Size

When Nancy asked about resources for small firms that don’t have an HR department, Julie recommended fractional and outsourced support. Just as firms use fractional CFOs, they can access fractional HR and legal expertise. “Building that relationship can be important,” Julie advised. “This isn’t the kind of stuff you want to guess about.”

For those needing to escalate beyond their employer, resources include:

  • The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) at the federal level
  • State civil rights divisions
  • Anonymous ethics helplines within larger companies
  • Employment attorneys for serious cases

Kami emphasized starting with your employer when possible, but “there’s always opportunities to go outside of the organization.”

Measuring What Matters

For an audience of accounting professionals, Kami offered data-driven accountability. “You can actually look at the data and see if your culture is working for you.”

Key metrics include:

  • Retention rates
  • Efficiency metrics
  • Promotion patterns across genders
  • Pay equity (“same role, same experience, different comp?”)

“In addition to all the warm and fuzzy stuff,” Kami said, “there are really tactical, measurable metrics organizations can look at to make sure they’re keeping themselves honest.”

Your Voice Is Your Power

The session closed with Questian sharing a quote from Melinda Gates. “Women speaking up for themselves is the strongest force we have to change the world.”

Julie’s admission resonated throughout the room. “I was 50 learning how to find my voice, and I am still finding my voice at 55.” Finding your voice is an ongoing practice that gets stronger with use.

For women in accounting firms, corporations, or running their own practices, these insights offer a path forward. Not just policies on paper, but real cultural change that makes speaking up safe and normal.

Listen to both parts of this special She Counts episode to hear the full conversation, including more audience questions and expert guidance. Follow She Counts on LinkedIn to join the conversation about creating workplaces where women don’t have to choose between their safety and their careers.

Because as Kimberly’s story reminds us, no woman should have to leave a job she loves to escape harassment. It’s time to change the culture, not just the policy.

Knowing Every Harassment Policy Won’t Save You When It Actually Happens

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An HR expert with decades of experience found herself doing something she never expected: hiding from a retiree who kept asking for hugs. Despite her master’s degree in human resources and years of training others on harassment prevention, she went along with the unwanted contact until she caught herself actively avoiding him in the building.

“What is going on here?” Julie Thiel finally asked herself.

Julie shared this moment of clarity during a live recording of the She Counts podcast at the AFWA Women Who Count conference in Mesa, Arizona. Over 100 women in accounting filled the main stage room to tackle one of the profession’s most uncomfortable topics with Julie, hosts Questian Telka and Nancy McClelland, and employment attorney Kami Hoskins.

As the first of a two-part podcast series recorded live at the session shows, knowing every policy and law doesn’t protect you from freezing when harassment actually happens.

The Gap Between Knowledge and Action

Julie’s credentials should have been enough. She has a psychology degree, a Master’s in HR and years of experience conducting investigations and leading training sessions. She knew all the best practices.

None of it helped when the retiree walked past her office.

“Julie, can I get a hug?” seemed harmless at first so she said yes. He visited periodically, always stopping by with the same request. She kept agreeing.

Then she noticed her own troubling behavior.

“Anytime I saw him coming into the building, I would start going the other way,” Julie told the audience. “I found myself in a position where I felt uncomfortable hugging him. I didn’t want to hug him anymore.”

The woman who’d trained countless others was doing exactly what she’d tell them not to do: complying with unwanted contact, then avoiding the person instead of addressing it.

“I want you to know that we’re all in the same boat when it comes to this topic,” she said.

The session proved her point in real time. While Julie shared her story, Nancy had a sudden realization.

“It happened to me earlier today,” Nancy admitted. “Somebody said something really inappropriate related to the fact that we were going to be talking about this topic on the stage, and I laughed.”

She paused, processing the irony of laughing off harassment while preparing to discuss harassment prevention.

“I’m going to go back to that person and say, ‘hey, you know what? I shouldn’t have laughed there because that was a really good opportunity for me to teach you that it’s not okay to say things like that.’”

If experts freeze and laugh off inappropriate comments, what’s really happening? It stems from how deeply women are conditioned to keep everyone comfortable—often at their own expense.

Why We’re Conditioned to Comply

The disconnect between knowledge and action isn’t personal failure. It’s social programming that starts before anyone enters the workforce.

“We’re so conditioned to smile and laugh it off,” Questian observed. “To overlook things that bother us in order to de-escalate.”

Women learn early to smooth things over and prioritize others’ comfort. By the time we enter professional environments, these responses are automatic. They kick in before we register something is wrong.

Julie acknowledged that comfort levels vary. “I’m sure some people would think, ‘No big deal. I’m happy to hug him.’ But for me, I had to pay attention to that inner pause.”

That “inner pause” is the moment something feels off before our conditioning overrides it. Learning to recognize and trust that pause is where real work begins.

Kami reframed the challenge. “This stuff takes practice. It’s not a muscle we’re going to have overnight. The more you do it, the stronger your muscle gets and the easier it gets.”

She emphasized self-compassion. “We need to have a little grace and forgiveness for ourselves. If we sometimes laugh because we felt unsafe or needed to de-escalate a situation, that’s okay. Just keep practicing.”

The audience’s responses confirmed how much work remains. When asked how they’d feel about speaking up if they experienced or witnessed harassment, their word cloud was revealing. “Uncomfortable” dominated the screen, followed by scared, hesitant, and nervous.

But some responded with “confident” and “empowered,” proof that building this muscle is possible. Unexpectedly, “empathy” and “responsibility” also appeared, suggesting women felt duty to speak up for others even when speaking for themselves felt impossible.

Understanding the Spectrum of Harassment

Sexual harassment ranges from uncomfortable requests to explicit threats. Understanding this spectrum helps us recognize harassment even when it doesn’t match our mental image.

Kami emphasized the word “unwelcome.”

“Is the behavior unwelcome? If it’s unwelcome, it’s probably a problem,” she explained. “It doesn’t matter whether someone intended harm or whether others would be bothered. What matters is whether the behavior is unwelcome to you.”

The session’s two stories illustrated this spectrum perfectly.

Julie’s experience involved a retiree with no power over her employment. His hug requests started casually without explicit threats. No quid pro quo existed, yet the unwelcome behavior affected her enough that she avoided parts of her workplace.

A listener’s submitted story painted a darker picture. Her supervisor at a large accounting firm repeatedly asked her to lunch, then dinner, then begged her to spend time outside work. During layoff discussions, he made it explicit: “I have feelings for you. I want you to go out with me. I can help make sure you don’t get laid off.”

“That is a very different kind of sexual harassment than what Julie shared with us,” Nancy said, noting the contrast. I don’t know that I would have heard Julie’s story and thought, that’s sexual harassment.”

Both involved unwelcome behavior. Both deserved addressing. But they fall into different legal categories.

“The story you shared is an example of quid pro quo harassment, Latin meaning ‘something for something,’” Kami explained. “That’s when a person in a supervisory capacity conditions employment on being subjected to sexual harassment.”

This legal distinction matters for understanding options, but shouldn’t determine whether you speak up. Behavior can violate company policy without necessarily creating a legal claim.

“It doesn’t mean we should keep it to ourselves,” Kami emphasized. “We should still share that information and give our employer the opportunity to correct the behavior.”

What the Numbers Tell Us

The session’s polling data was sobering. While 37% of women nationally report experiencing sexual harassment according to McKinsey’s Women in the Workplace 2024, the accounting professionals in the room showed higher rates.

About 44% had personally experienced sexual harassment. Another 31% knew someone who had. Only about 20% had neither experienced it nor knew anyone who had.

“Ours was closer to 50%,” Nancy observed, noting the accounting profession appeared to exceed national averages.

Whether from self-selection or something specific about accounting, these numbers demand attention. They represent colleagues, partners, and sometimes ourselves.

Building Strength for Next Time

Traditional training rarely acknowledges that knowing the right answer and doing it in real time are different skills. Knowledge doesn’t equal action, our conditioning runs deep, and harassment exists on a spectrum where “unwelcome” is the standard that matters. Most importantly, boundary-setting is a muscle requiring practice, not perfection.

For women in accounting, these insights matter. We’re not failing because we don’t know policies. We’re struggling because we haven’t practiced the skills in real situations.

The goal isn’t perfection; it’s shrinking the gap between what we know and what we do. It’s making “uncomfortable” smaller on that word cloud while “confident” and “empowered” grow.

This conversation continues in part two, with practical reporting strategies, what actually happens when you go to HR, and navigating harassment as employees, employers, and business owners.

Listen to the full episode and return for part two. These women are building the roadmap we all need.

Resources for those experiencing harassment:

  • National Sexual Assault Hotline: 1-800-656-4673
  • National Domestic Violence Hotline: 1-800-799-7233
  • National Suicide and Crisis Lifeline: 988

Time Blindness and Trader Joe’s Paralysis Doesn’t Define This Accountant’s Career

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Jina Etienne stood in Trader Joe’s, paralyzed by eight different ice cream flavors, unable to choose between them. This moment perfectly captured what her decades-long accounting career had felt like, not because she wasn’t capable, but because her ADHD brain was processing every decision through multiple filters at once.

In this episode of She Counts, the real-talk podcast for women in accounting, hosts Questian Telka and Nancy McClelland sit down with CPA and speaker Jina Etienne to explore a reality affecting countless women in the profession: living with undiagnosed ADHD while maintaining the appearance of having it all together.

When Your Child’s Diagnosis Becomes Your Own

For both Jina and Questian, ADHD recognition didn’t come through self-awareness; it came through their children, as many late diagnoses do for women in their forties.

Jina’s story began when her husband couldn’t understand their son Dominic’s behavior. “Dominic was really into this project,” she recalls. “He worked really hard on the project. My husband takes him to school, drops him off, and then he says, ‘So, Dominic, where’s the project?’ He forgot to bring it to school.” Her husband wondered how someone could be so invested in something and completely forget it. That bewilderment sparked a diagnosis journey that would circle back to Jina herself.

After Dominic’s diagnosis, Jina asked the psychiatrist how to parent an ADHD child. The doctor gave her a book called “Driven to Distraction.” Reading through the diagnostic criteria, Jina found herself checking off symptom after symptom. “If you have more than 12 of these characteristics out of 20, you might have ADHD. Well, I had 12. So I called back and I said, ‘Can you diagnose me?’”

Questian’s path was similar. Watching her 14-year-old son navigate challenges that mirrored her own childhood, she recognized patterns she’d never connected before. “We have so many similarities between the two of us,” she shares, though her son hasn’t wanted to pursue formal diagnosis yet.

The Gender Gap in Diagnosis

ADHD in women often hides behind a carefully constructed wall of competence. The diagnostic tools themselves were designed around boys’ behaviors, focusing on the bouncing-off-the-walls hyperactivity that disrupted classrooms rather than the quiet inattention more common in girls.

“We make gender assumptions about boys and girls,” Jina explains. “Girls are quiet, girls are thoughtful. Girls are nice. So if a boy is boisterous and he’s busy running around and can’t sit still, then it must be ADHD. But if a girl is sitting still, maybe it’s not ADHD.”

This gendered lens means countless women slip through diagnostic cracks. Questian’s grandmother used to say she was “bouncing off the walls all the time,” even “climbing furniture, hanging from the ceiling, just all over the place.” The solution was to put her in gymnastics. No one connected those dots to ADHD because she could also sit still when required, even if her mind was racing.

The biological component adds another layer of complexity. Estrogen helps regulate dopamine, the neurotransmitter already inconsistent in ADHD brains. “As our estrogen levels start to drop, the struggle becomes more obvious,” Jina notes. “It was always there, but as we get older, it can feel like things got harder.”

Nancy adds important context: only three to five percent of adults have ADHD, though informal studies suggest higher rates in accounting. When people dismiss it saying “everyone has ADHD now,” they’re conflating normal distraction with a clinical condition that, as Nancy’s therapist reminds her, “doesn’t become a clinical diagnosis until whatever it is that you’re dealing with interferes with your life.”

The Exhausting Art of Masking

After decades of compensating and overachieving to hide their struggles, women with ADHD reach a breaking point. Jina describes it perfectly with an analogy. “Imagine picking up a 10-pound weight. You’re holding it halfway up, and you just have to hold it like that for ten years. At first it doesn’t seem that hard. Eventually it gets heavy, but you can do it. And then it gets to the point where it’s so heavy, you’re struggling to do it, and you ask yourself, ‘Why am I even doing this?’ And then at some point you just throw it down.”

“I constantly overprepare for everything and feel like if I don’t overprepare, I’m not going to be able to manage what’s happening,” Questian says, describing her version of this weight. But even this strategy is failing. “I’ve gotten to the point where it’s become very difficult for me to emotionally hide my overwhelm.”

Women tend to internalize the physical manifestations in professional settings. “If I’m in a meeting, trying to hide that,” Questian explains about suppressing her fidgeting, “if I can’t express it and move my body the way that I need to, then it becomes internal agitation. It moves inward.”

Decision paralysis adds another layer. Back to Jina’s Trader Joe’s story, “Instead of coming home with two things, I come home with eight things because I’m overloaded with the decisions I have to make, and I’m afraid to make the wrong decision.” This extends to work, where Questian describes having multiple big projects. “I get into a spiral in my mind. Which one do I start with?”

Time blindness creates special challenges in accounting. Jina explains there’s actual neuroscience behind it—something called scalar expectancy theory. The brain’s internal “pacemaker” runs inconsistently in ADHD brains. “It has nothing to do with not managing time,” she emphasizes. “People think it’s time management and I think it’s time processing.”

What Jina calls “imposter syndrome on steroids” compounds everything. Before diagnosis, the negative self-talk was relentless. “I felt like something was wrong with me.”

From Shame to Strategy

Diagnosis transformed self-blame into self-understanding for both women. “My whole life made sense to me,” Questian reflects. “Getting that diagnosis helped me understand myself a lot better and prevented me from feeling this level of guilt about who I was.”

For Jina, diagnosis brought vocabulary to experiences she couldn’t previously articulate. The revelation about difficulty reading social cues moved her to tears during the conversation. “Those words were not in my vocabulary. I just thought something was wrong.” But awareness brought empowerment: “Now I watch for things I didn’t watch for before.”

The practical strategies are highly individual. Questian found medication helps. She takes “a kid dose of Ritalin” because Adderall was too strong. Jina’s neurologist explained that different medications affect ADHD brains differently. “For anybody listening, if you had a reaction to one medication, try another before you dismiss it altogether.”

Technology is an ally when configured correctly. Jina’s iPhone has focus settings that automatically silence notifications on Monday writing days. “My phone automatically turns off all notifications at 9 a.m. It doesn’t ring. Nothing shows up on my screen.” She maintains 16 different Google calendars, color-coded for visual processing. At 11 PM, her phone grays out all icons, removing even visual temptation.

Communication strategies matter, too. Jina and her husband developed what she calls the “junk drawer” method. While he thinks internally before speaking, she needs to verbally process everything. Their solution was to let Jina talk it out. “I can just talk, and then I have to say, ‘This is the part you need to hear.’”

However, workplace disclosure remains complicated. “Some people worry about self-disclosure,” Jina notes, “because if you disclose something to your boss, sometimes the HR team feels an obligation to do something.” Her advice? “You don’t have to reveal that you have ADHD if you can explain what your strengths are.”

The Superpowers Are Real

ADHD brings legitimate strengths alongside its challenges. When Questian mentions her “high sense of intuition and emotional awareness” and extreme empathy, Jina confirms, “Those are markers for ADHD and so is high creativity.”

The same brain struggling with executive function excels at ideation. “You don’t even have a box to think inside of,” Jina explains. The hyperfocus that makes her work until 3 AM also allows her to solve complex problems others can’t crack. “When I’m in the zone, I can really work and knock stuff out.”

Nancy, who doesn’t have ADHD, offers perspective about the double-edged nature. “I don’t have the same creativity that y’all do, but I also don’t have to deal with idea overload.”

“We all have some of these things from time to time, but some of us have a lot of these things all the time,” Jina says, emphasizing an important distinction. Having occasional struggles with focus isn’t ADHD. It’s about having “ten, 12 or 14” of the chronic disturbances, not just a few.

Moving Forward with Understanding

This conversation reveals that ADHD in professional women isn’t about inability; it’s about brains that work differently in a world designed for neurotypical processing. The exhaustion comes from constant translation and compensation.

When someone dismisses ADHD saying “everyone has it,” they miss the clinical reality. As Questian shares, “I’ve actually had people make this comment to me, and I’m sitting here going, ‘Oh, I’m sorry, have you lived in my life? Have you walked in my shoes?’” Yet by speaking openly, Questian creates space for others to recognize themselves and seek understanding. 

“The labels we’ve been using do not reflect the beautiful, complex diversity that lives within each of us,” Jina reminds us. “Inclusion isn’t about them. It’s about how we show up for others.”

For women in accounting who’ve spent years perfecting their professional masks while struggling with focus, time management, and mental chaos, you’re not alone, you’re not broken, and there are strategies that can help. Whether through diagnosis, medication, technology, or simply understanding that your brain works differently, there’s a path from exhaustion to empowerment.

Listen to the full episode to hear more about specific strategies and the transformative power of understanding your own mind. Then join the conversation on the She Counts Podcast LinkedIn page, where we’re continuing this discussion about ADHD in the accounting profession.