With today’s breakneck pace of technological change, marketplace globalization, regulatory complexity, and workforce changes, disruption is real. It is transforming all business and the CPA profession. If you attended the WSCPA Annual Meeting last month, you heard Kimberly Ellison-Taylor, Immediate Past Chairman of the AICPA, talk about thriving in disruptive times and how to embrace the opportunities that lie before the CPA profession. These times call for the entire CPA profession, even every CPA, to adapt and evolve in order to remain competitive.

The WSCPA is committed to support you in this journey in a thoughtful way. At the same time, the WSCPA needs to change as well.

On behalf of the WSCPA Board of Directors, we are pleased to present to you a new strategic plan, envisioned with today’s challenges and opportunities in mind and with the primary goal of providing even more value to you.

This plan is a reality because of the input of hundreds of members who provided feedback to the Board’s Strategic Planning Committee. More than a year ago, the Board began a strategic planning process that involved participation of the full board and this committee. The committee worked with the Washington CPA Foundation last summer to survey members on the value they receive from being a member, and in September they gathered feedback from a professionally and generationally diverse group of 50 members and non-members during a full-day strategy session.

The committee then worked with the board to finalize the WSCPA’s new purpose, a unifying principle to drive everything that the WSCPA does: We are a community of CPAs and financial professionals cultivating authentic relationships, unique learning experiences, and purposeful advocacy for our future. The strategic plan pulls directly from this purpose and outlines how we will provide unique benefits and create opportunities for you to connect with other professionals. We will support you in your quest to remain competitive in today’s changing marketplace, while you learn at every stage of your career. We will continue to advocate for the profession and enable you to actively engage in advocacy with us. We will continue to promote the profession to students by leveraging the Washington CPA Foundation’s scholarship program.

Read on to learn about the new opportunities and programs that will be available to you as the plan is implemented. This plan will help ensure that we are supporting and meeting the diverse needs of you, our members, and the rapidly transforming profession.

Kirsten Duke, CPA, is Chief Financial Officer at DomainTools and 2018-2019 Chair of the WSCPA Board of Directors. You can contact her at kirsten@domaintools.com.

Kimberly Scott is President & CEO of the WSCPA. You can contact her at kscott@wscpa.org.

This article appeared in the summer 2018 issue of the WashingtonCPA Magazine. Read more here.

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