Tom Hood, the longtime CEO of the Maryland Affiliation of CPAs, has joined the leadership team of the Association of Worldwide Licensed Qualified Accountants (the Association). As govt vice president of enterprise advancement and engagement, Hood will report to Barry Melancon, CPA, CGMA, the Association’s CEO.
Hood has served as CEO of the Maryland Association of CPAs (MACPA) considering the fact that 1997. Prior to MACPA, Hood, CPA/CITP, CGMA, worked as a chief monetary officer. He has been a longtime thought leader and driver of transform amid condition CPA societies.
Jackie Brown, MACPA’s chief working officer for the past 23 several years, will just take the helm of the condition society.
The Affiliation also has acquired the Enterprise Finding out Institute (BLI) from MACPA. The acquisition of BLI’s discovering systems will enhance the Association’s offerings to company businesses in upskilling and reskilling their personnel so they continue to meet up with ever-altering market requires. Together, the Association and BLI will accelerate the introduction of new information for accounting and finance pros globally. Hood will continue on to deliver leadership in supporting BLI’s shoppers, products, and services during BLI’s integration with the Affiliation.
“Tom’s vision and mission to help finance and accounting specialists grow in a switching company environment is properly aligned with the Association’s aims of powering trust, prospect and prosperity for users, learners, the profession and those people they provide. He delivers vitality, insight, enthusiasm and a unique capability to facilitate connections,” Melancon explained. “Tom will increase worth to our engagement with companies and the accounting and finance professions, growing our comprehension of the problems they deal with and how to greatest fulfill their desires.”
Melancon extra, “We are happy of our popularity as a key supply for accounting and finance professionals’ finding out requirements. BLI’s written content complements and enriches our existing learning equipment, even further deepens our world-wide offerings and aids grow our price proposition. This development is an important phase in the Association’s commitment to developing a potent and vibrant potential for the profession and those it serves.”
A single emphasis of Hood’s position will be partnering with Andrew Harding, FCMA, CGMA, the Association’s chief govt of management accounting, to more professionalize management accounting and guidance professionals in getting their Chartered International Management Accountant (CGMA) designation in the Americas. This consists of the Finance Management Plan, an on the net discovering method that teaches candidates the finance, company, people today, and management techniques required to triumph in finance groups of the upcoming.
The tempo of adjust
Hood stated his Association function and the BLI acquisition are opportunities to quicken and broaden do the job to get ready enterprises and their advisers for alter and disruption. The pandemic has heightened the will need for long term-concentrated capabilities.
“This pandemic really has been the biggest disruption that I have at any time observed, and when I talk to users, they would concur with that,” Hood explained. “On the other hand, I consider it’s also the major prospect for our occupation globally. If you think about what is happened, the relief packages that are coming out from pretty a lot all over the entire world … and just about every just one of all those aid offers is being applied by way of accounting, tax, and payroll systems, which are the wheelhouse of our overall occupation.”
Accountants have rallied amid uncertainty to support organizations endure any time achievable through the economic downturn brought on by the pandemic, Hood reported. Significantly, organizations are searching for to forecast and strategize over and above COVID-19.
“This is our opportunity now, as we glance through the fog of COVID, we see the vaccines are on the horizon. No one particular understands specifically when we’ll be equipped to get via it,” Hood said. But now is the time for accountants and finance specialists to go from “essential to indispensable.”
— Kim Nilsen ([email protected]) is the JofA‘s publisher.
