We cannot think about balance in terms of work-life balance without considering the pipeline issues. The AICPA has a pipeline plan in place. CalCPA is in the process of coming up with its own plan as well. San Joaquin chapter leadership is hoping we can have a discussion with leadership to learn more about this.

In the meantime, a good way to support existing accounting students is to provide them with scholarships. Let’s make sure we have another good year in providing scholarships to students. With that in mind the scholarship period is now open! Please forward the application to any students you think would be a good fit.

Andrew Le

Hello San Joaquin Chapter! My name is Andrew Le, and I will serve as the Chapter President for the upcoming fiscal year. Through my time with CalCPA to date, I have been amazed by the talented professionals in our field and the wide range of specializations they cover. I hope to be able to serve you in aligning CalCPA’s state and chapter resources to support all of you.

At the state level, CalCPA is continuing to focus on professional development and building out a pipeline for new professionals. Committees composed of representatives from all chapters in the state will collaborate to centralize technical content and CPE. This will give us access to knowledge from a larger pool of experts than our own chapter, gaining more opportunities to learn.

Throughout all this, I hope our chapter events will be a means of socializing with professional peers. Each event will be a chance to learn from sharing experiences without the trappings of a formal learning environment. We will continue to have opportunities to learn on an ad hoc basis, but my vision for our chapter is to use our events as a means of introducing balance into our professional lives. Leave the technical focus to our day-to-day routine and leave the professional development to the state events. Here, we enjoy food and drinks while socializing with fellow professionals. I look forward to having a great year with all of you.

Andrew Le

As the new calendar year is beginning, so our CalCPA year is coming to a close. I really liked this quote since one of the latest holidays celebrated, Christmas, is often referred to as “the season of giving.” While the CalCPA year technically doesn’t close until April 30, I’m not sure how many of you will be interested to read anything more than necessary until or after that point. So, this will be my last blog, but I still plan to see you at events in the coming years!

This year has been all about networking towards building connections and encouraging you to get involved with CalCPA. I have been pleased with the results of this year’s goal! By the time this blog is posted, our chapter will have hosted more than 20 events and discussion forums for our region’s members. We’ve given away $16,500 in scholarship funds to deserving student members in our Chapter. We’ve raised more than $12,000 at events for future scholarships. Despite seasons with various “bugs” and illnesses going around, we’ve averaged more than 35 attendees among the year’s events and eight at discussion forums. We’ve had several individuals reach out with interest to join our Chapter board or to become involved in committees. We will have a full complement of board members and officers starting May 1. These are just some examples of the successes we’ve had this fiscal year!

I can’t take credit for all of these successes by myself! I’ve had an amazing team backing me this year, including:

• Past President Chris Barnes;
• Vice President Andrew Le;
• Secretary/Treasurer Toby Benguerel;
• Directors Shelvina Bains, Maribel Galan, Shannon Hayes, Ned Leiba, Nathan Ortiz, Elicia Padlo Pitau, and Megan Stambaugh;
• Committee Chairs Elicia Padlo Pitau, Ned Leiba, Doug DeBoer, Shannon Hayes, Megan Stambaugh, Kit Lee, Ashley Green, Eileen Pastenieks, Rob Hawks, Chris Barnes, Andrew Le, Lizzi Rownd, Chad Van Houten, and Sintia Younan;
• Program Manager Rachael Fleming; and
• Last but not least, YOU!

Without all of you, we would not have had the buy-in to make my year’s vision happen, the events planned and executed to give an outlet for the vision to happen, or the brilliant ideas that have been suggested to make future years even better. Thank you so, so much for the time, thoughts and presence you have given to this chapter. I am truly humbled by your commitment to CalCPA.

The next time you see a President blog for our chapter in May, our next president, Andrew Le will be at the helm. I’m so excited to see where Andrew takes our Chapter, above and beyond!

Thank you, and Signing off,
Jamee N. Bollinger, CPA
San Joaquin Chapter incoming Past President

ABC Night “Competition”: The results are in, and ABC Stockton is the current year champion over ABC Modesto! ABC Stockton’s event at The Kitchen welcomed 75 local professionals, faculty and students/scholarship winners from schools in our chapter’s region, and even some local politicians.

Thank you to both the ABC Modesto and Stockton committees for your dedication to creating great social events, and thank you to all who donated and sponsored these events. Between these two events, more than $9,000 was raised for contribution to our chapter’s Scholarship Fund!

CalCPA Council: On Nov. 2, I was able to attend the CalCPA virtual session of its triannual Council meeting. Council members came together to review and approve latest financials and meeting minutes. We also heard CalCPA business updates from our CEO Denise, the DE&I/Pipeline Task Force Committee, Government Relations, and IT, to name a few. We also learned about the brand refresh that CalCPA is working on, and had a chance to help brainstorm our vision for who CalCPA will focus on serving in the future.

Congratulations, Rob Hawks! At November’s Council Meeting, the Council voted to approve our Chapter’s very own Rob Hawks as a new Council Member! Rob’s role on Council will be the attending representative for the State Management of an Accounting Practice Committee. Rob is very involved in our SQ Chapter, and he’s a huge proponent of CalCPA with his firm and our region. Way to go for getting involved on the state level and representing our Chapter well!

Student-Faculty Night: The SQ Chapter Scholarship Committee is proud to announce we have presented a total of $16,500 in scholarships to 12 students! We presented the awards to these deserving students, alongside faculty from their schools, on Nov. 30 at our Student-Faculty Night. It was a great evening of food, speed-mentoring, and welcoming these students into the SQ Chapter.

Mark Your Calendars: After the holidays, but before the next busy season starts (Jan. 10 to be exact), our chapter will be hosting a Winter Social at the Ten Pin Fun Center in Turlock! Mark your calendars now, and be sure to get registered when the sign-ups come out.

Until the New Year,
Jamee N. Bollinger, CPA, SQ Chapter President

I don’t know about you, but the last couple of weeks since the Oct. 17 deadline passed have felt just as busy as our official “busy season.” Would you agree? This networking quote spoke to me since it has recently been harvest season for many of our farmer friends and clients. As the Chapter Board and its officers are winding down the year, we also are looking forward to planning next year (yes, already!). I know incoming President Andrew Le will have many updates for you when his presidential messages begin next year. I’m excited to see his vision come to fruition, and I will let him tell you all about it.

First off, I’d like to congratulate two of our board members on their acceptance into the CalCPA Leadership Institute program: Secretary/Treasurer Toby Benguerel and Director Megan Stambaugh. This is a competitive, state-wide program where participants attend workshops to further their leadership, planning and management skills. It is a great honor to have not only one, but also TWO individuals representing our chapter in this program. I look forward to them sharing their experiences with us.

Firm Olympics was a blast, and we appreciate everyone who attended. Twelve teams showed up to play Ladder Toss, Bottle Bash, Corn Hole, Chippo and Ring & Hook. In the end, the team from Atherton & Associates won the trophy. Congratulations to them! Come back next year to see if you can win the trophy!

ABC Modesto boasted a little more than 50 people in attendance with a nice profit going to the Chapter Scholarship Fund. Meanwhile, the ABC Stockton Committee has been hard at work planning their ABC Night event at The Kitchen on Nov. 3—I’ll see you there too!

The Scholarship Committee recently reviewed 24 student applications. The committee will be proposing plans to the board soon for who of the 24 will receive scholarship awards. As Chapter president and a representative of the Scholarship Committee, I look forward to co-presenting these awards with faculty who have taught our scholarship winners. Come to Chez Shari on Nov. 30 to see these deserving students receive their scholarships and to participate in speed-mentoring them.

Our Nominations Committee has a slate of directors to join our board for 2023-24. Once the board approves this slate, you will be receiving an electronic slate to vote on—stay tuned! Speaking of next year, please let myself or Rachael Fleming know if you are interested in serving on a committee or on the SQ Board of Directors. Even if the rosters are full, we would love to still include you at events and add you to the roster for the near future.

As I write this, we are all in the middle of deadlines! My tax colleagues and I are breathing a sigh of relief that Sept. 15’s projects have come and gone, but are quickly getting back into gear up for our Sept. 30 and Oct. 15 deadlines. Over in the A&A department, my colleagues are busily working through audits, many of which are also due Oct. 15. Here’s to the home stretch, and some good time off to relax and recuperate after busy season! (Here’s hoping you have a small amount of extended nonprofit returns to work through before Nov. 15 too!) 
 
I hope you are signed up to attend our annual ABC Nights in Modesto (Sept. 29, Greens on 10th) and Stockton (Nov. 3, The Kitchen). I plan to attend both, and I hope to meet you there! Our two ABC Night committees are on a mission to see which of their one-night-only events can host more people, and raise more money for our Chapter’s Scholarship Fund. I plan to report the results of this (very friendly) competition in a later monthly message. 

Speaking of friendly competition, we are still looking for teams to sign up to compete in our Firm Olympics (Oct. 20, Blaker Brewing in Ceres). As in past years, there will be food, drinks and connecting with everyone (that’s right, everyone!) at this battle of the yard games. (And I hear there’s a new game debuting this year. You’ll have to attend to find out what it is). Unable to create a full team of four people? No problem! Sign up anyway and you may be teamed up with other partially filled teams for even more networking opportunities. 

I personally am looking forward to the YEP Business Forum (Oct. 27, Wildfire Public House in Modesto) to learn all of the professional etiquette I never knew I needed. (Including, but not limited to, the best way to balance your plate of food and your drink while keeping a hand free to shake your new acquaintance’s hand. How do people do that?!) 

As mentioned in last month’s message, the scholarship application is quickly coming to its close date, faculty have been contacted for further relations-building and the committee is looking forward to the rewarding task of reviewing each student’s scholarship application. To meet our scholarship winners and celebrate their awards with them, be sure to sign up for our Student Faculty Night (Nov. 30, Chez Shari in Manteca). 

Our Chapter’s Nominations Committee is reviewing candidates to join our Board of Directors for our next term starting May 1, 2023. Stay tuned for the electronic slate that you can vote on later this fall. (The voting link will likely arrive in the same e-blast email in which you find my monthly messages ). 

I can’t believe we’re already half-way through the “active” part of this CalCPA year! Just recently, I sat down with the San Joaquin chapter’s all-star Program Manager, Rachael Fleming, to discuss how the year was going. We both agreed that we have a lot of great momentum from our May-August events, and cannot wait to see and connect with you all at our events over the next few months. In addition to seeing increased attendance at events (despite occasional COVID flare-ups), our board has begun to look towards next fiscal year by brainstorming colleagues and co-workers who we can get involved on next year’s board and committees! If you’re interested, don’t hesitate to let Rachael and Jamee know what questions you have.

We are also looking towards one of the highlights of our year: Student/Faculty Night! This is sure to be an outstanding event where we CalCPA members get to meet faculty from the colleges and universities in our chapter’s region. We also get to meet and speed-mentor their students. Best of all, our chapter has a special fund that allows us to award scholarships to some very deserving and hard-working students! A few years ago, Ned Leiba, CPA, one of our dedicated board members and committee chairs, brought new vision to how our chapter’s Scholarship Committee does things. As a member of the Scholarship Committee, it has been an honor to see it grow and take off under Ned’s direction. Here are some of the ways that the Scholarship Committee has been growing. If you’re interested in joining us, we’d be happy to have you join the team:

Faculty Networking and Outreach: We have a total of 7 (yes, s-e-v-e-n) colleges and universities in our chapter. WOW! (Can you guess what they all are? Answer at the bottom of this post ). Part of Ned’s initiative to refresh the Scholarship Committee has included building our chapter’s network of the accounting academic faculty at each of these schools. Our committee members have had the opportunity to take these faculty members out to lunch. Topics of conversation include getting to know the faculty, their school, and their students better, and of course, encourage participation in our scholarship program. Ultimately, our goal is to learn more about how we as a CalCPA chapter can support these faculty and their students not only as suppliers of scholarships, but as advocates of our profession. After all, they are training and teaching the coming generations to join us!

Student Outreach: Students are our primary benefactors of this committee. While we are still actualizing this part of the committee refresh, our hope is to inspire students to become more involved with our CalCPA chapter. We hope that their attendance at our events will give you, their future employer, an opportunity to meet them. CalCPA is also starting a “Campus Influencer” program (previously referred to as “Campus Ambassador”) as a way to identify student leaders and help spread the word about CalCPA in their everyday environment: college! It doesn’t end with being awarded a scholarship: one of our most recent efforts has been to reach out to scholarship winners from past years to reconnect.

Scholarship Slots: To encourage faculty and student participation in our scholarship program, our Scholarship Committee is looking for a competitive slate of applicants. To inspire students to apply, we have notified each faculty member that we have 1-2 dedicated scholarship slots to be awarded to 1-2 deserving students at their school. With this structure and enough qualified applicants, we have the capability of awarding up to $16,500 among 9 students annually. Of course, if our chapter funds allow and we have more deserving students than slots, the committee will consider making additional awards. (I’ve been a part of the application reviews for the past few years, and believe me when I say these students are high-caliber individuals. It is never easy to make decisions about who will receive awards.) While last year gave us a smaller than normal pool of applicants, our chapter was pleased to award 5 different students a total of $12,500. If you know of any college students who qualify, check out and share our Scholarship Application). The application closes on September 30!

Scholarship Funding: So where is all this money coming from? Annually, our chapter hosts several events, but a few are designed to be profitable so that we can add to our chapter’s Scholarship Fund. These include: ABC Night Modesto, ABC Night Stockton, and Firm Olympics. If you plan to attend these events this year, give yourself a pat on the back! We, the Scholarship Committee, thank you for participating in some fun, networking-based events that will ultimately benefit hard-working, deserving students.

Have you guessed what the 7 colleges and universities are? They are (in no particular order): CSU Stanislaus, University of the Pacific, Humphreys University, Columbia College, San Joaquin Delta College, Merced Junior College, and Modesto Junior College. (Did you guess them all correctly?)

• CalCPA, with our new Chair Tayiika Dennis, is on a mission to tell others that we are not “just” CPAs. Take part in social media campaigns by posting about your hobbies using the hashtags #CPAand and #CoolestProfessionAround. 
• I posted that “I am a CPA and a Violinist. #CPAand.” What would your post say? 
• If you or someone you know is deserving of a CalCPA Public Service Award (an individual or a firm), look for application opportunities in the near future! 
• Is your firm a leader in making sure diversity, equity and inclusion (DE&I) is happening? Tell CalCPA about it for a chance to spotlight your firm in the monthly magazine! 

Rebecca Ryan, APF, presented “Headwinds & Tailwinds: The Future of your Workforce, Business Models, ESG, and Leadership.” Key takeaways included: 

• Work trends: People want “flexible flexibility,” and they want their work to have meaning and purpose. 
• People trends: toward more “whole-hearted leadership”—train and lead others with empathy (not just improving technical skills), such as recognizing the signs of burnout in a colleague.

Latest statistics from the California Board of Accountancy shows almost 66,000 active CPA licenses in the state of California. Wow! 

During the 2021/22 Fiscal Year, the 14 CalCPA chapters gave out a total of $289,795 in scholarships to well-deserving students. 

Our chapter’s very own Dean Andal received special recognition for his contributions to CalCPA and his political advocacy for the profession. Mr. Andal was elected to the State Legislature in the 90s and then became involved with a national advocacy alliance with other CPAs. Congratulations, Dean! 

Personal Finance Education/Financial Literacy in public schools: 

• Some bills proposed in the CA legislature! A big step forward several years in the making. 
• Also proposed to include accounting in the “M” of STEM education programs. 

We installed the CalCPA Chair Tayiika M. Dennis, CPA from the Los Angeles Chapter! 

• Read about her focus and goals for the year in the August 2022 issue of the California CPA magazine. (See above social media campaign) 
• Meet Tayiika at our chapter’s Firm Olympics event coming up in October! 

CalCPA Strategy Update: 

• The chapter presidents, vice presidents, and council members brainstormed ways to accomplish new CalCPA goals and analyzed CalCPA’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. 
• Goal is to make all levels of CalCPA (state and chapters) more cohesive in the sharing and distribution of content and information. 

CalCPA Education Foundation: 

• We installed Adam Blitz, CPA of the Fresno Chapter as new Chair of the Education Foundation. 
• The Education Foundation has several goals for updating course offerings, including more virtual/digital conference viewing platforms and CPE sign-ins, and embracing/developing shorter-length CPE (such as nano-learning).​​​​​