MOVE Like This!
Accounting firm leaders are justifiably concerned about recruiting and retaining the talent needed for their firms to survive, and ideally, thrive. MOVE Like This features conversations, lessons and ideas Accounting MOVE Project firms have used to successfully find, retain, develop and advance women and diverse talent to drive competitive advantage and stand out from the crowd.
Episodes
Kimberly Ellison-Taylor has been in rooms most people never get access to. NASA. KPMG. Oracle. The chair of the AICPA. A founding member of CHIEF. She has watched the accounting profession talk about diversity, equity, and inclusion for decades, and she has a clear-eyed view of why the needle moves so slowly.
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A lot of the decisions firms are making about DEI right now are driven by fear of legal exposure. Employment attorney Aislinn Sroczynski thinks that fear is mostly misplaced, and in some cases, it is actually creating the risk firms are trying to avoid.
Aislinn joins host Bonnie Buol Ruszczyk to lay ...
Sarah Elliott started her career as a CPA. Then she noticed something: the profession was excellent at developing technical skills and almost completely unprepared to develop leaders. So she built Intend2Lead to close that gap.
Sarah joins host Bonnie Buol Ruszczyk to walk...
Dan Hood has spent decades watching the accounting profession change. He has never seen everything change at once quite like this.
The editor-in-chief of Accounting Today joins host Bonnie Buol Ruszczyk to make sense of the collision: AI and accelerating technology, the sh...
When firms go through M&A, leadership changes, or major system rollouts, most of the attention goes to the operational side. The communication strategy is usually an afterthought. Alice Grey Harrison, founder of AGH Consulting, has spent more than 30 years helping accounting firms fix that mistake.
When Bland & Associates started thinking seriously about succession planning, the options on the table felt familiar: sell to private equity, pursue a merger, or follow the traditional partner buyout model. None of them felt right. So Jeremy Vokt helped chart a different course, making Bland the first ESOP-owned CPA firm in Nebraska.
Rehmann has 1,100 people, 22 offices, and retention rates that consistently beat the profession's averages. That doesn't happen by accident. Stacie Kwaiser, the firm's CEO, joins host Bonnie Buol Ruszczyk to pull back the curtain on what nearly three decades of intentional culture-building actually looks like in practice.
The anchor of Rehmann's approach is its Career Advocacy Program — started almost 20 years ago as an init...
Two accounting professors walk into a podcast, and what they have to say about the next generation of talent should stop every firm leader in their tracks.
Claire Costin (University of Portland) and Steph Mason (DePaul University) both came up through the profession before moving into academia, where they now research inequity, bias, and intersectionality in accounting. They join host Bonnie Buol Ruszczyk to share what today's stu...
When the language around diversity, equity, and inclusion becomes politically charged, many firms do one of two things: double down on the terminology or go completely silent. According to Cass Bailey, CEO of Slice Communications, both are mistakes.
Cass joins host Bonnie ...
Most firms that try CliftonStrengths treat it as an event. Clark Nuber treats it as a culture. Angela Oakley, Director of the firm's Talent Advisor Program, joins host Bonnie Buol Ruszczyk to share what nearly a decade of strengths-based coaching looks like in practice — and why the difference between a one-time assessment and a lasting developme...
What if your firm's commitment to sustainability wasn't just the right thing to do — but a genuine competitive advantage? Jennifer Harrity, Director of Sustainability at Sensiba, joins host Bonnie Buol Ruszczyk to share how B Corp certification transformed her firm's ability to attract talent, align with purpose-driven clients, and build long-ter...
There's a difference between being included and truly belonging — and for many women and professionals of color in accounting, that gap is exactly where careers stall. Donny Shimamoto of the Center for Accounting Transformation joins host Bonnie Buol Ruszczyk to explore why the profession keeps losing diverse talent before it reaches leadership, and what firms can do differently.
Donny speaks from personal experience as an As...
What if your next great hire isn't the one with the most impressive resume — but the one who actually scores highest on the job? Ashley Kostos, Sales Manager at Accountests, joins host Bonnie Buol Ruszczyk to explore how data-driven skills assessments help accounting firms hire smarter, develop talent faster, and remove bias from promotion decisi...
What does it look like when a firm's CEO truly leads DEI from the top? BPM CEO Jim Wallace joins host Bonnie Buol Ruszczyk to share how his firm has woven diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging into its business strategy — not as a side initiative, but as a core operating principle.
In this episode of MOVE Like This, Bonnie speaks with Carrie Steffen about what she’s seeing from her new role as CEO of the Iowa Society of CPAs. After 25 years advising firms on growth and marketing, Carrie stepped into the CEO role in 2025 with responsibility for member engagement, education, and legislative advocacy. One of her earliest takeaways is that communication is far more complex than it appears. A state society r...
Just in time for Girl Scout cookie season, we talk to Jessica McClain, the organizations newly-appointed CFO. On this episode, Jessica and Bonnie talk about the importance of "belonging" in the workplace. Research shows that at least 64% of people feel the need to hide some aspect of their identity from their co-workers. Trying to keep part of yourself hidden is stressful, and the energy used to perform a certain way is energy that...
On this episode, we talk about why so many women are "people pleasers" and have such a hard time saying no when needed. We dive into how to identify our boundaries and literally practice saying "no" until we are comfortable doing so. We then expand on that conversation to discuss what firm leaders can do to create a culture where client needs are met and team members support each other yet everyone can ask for what they need and sa...
Today, we leave the accounting profession for an episode and talk to Safiya Reid, the AVP of Employee Engagement with Pure Insurance. We talk about how she got into the DEI space, why focusing on naysayers is not the best use of our time, and reiterate how this work is all about adding opportunities – not subtracting them. We also talk about how we both look forward to a day when we work ourselves out of a job in DEI because ...
Strap in because this one is longer than most but well worth the time investment. Sandra Wiley, president of Boomer Consulting, joins to discuss Boomer's DEI Consortium, the talent shortage, and how firms can rise above the talent shortage. But we also discuss how DEI is a "human issue" even though many try to politicize it, particularly during these few weeks prior to a presidential election. We share personal stories and how each...
After a break in August, we kick off September with a great conversation with Mayumi Young, the founder and CEO of CPA MOMS. We discuss what led her to starting this business and how it has grown and changed since 2008. We also delve into the accounting profession as a whole, discussing how firms need to make adjustments to attract, retain and promote women, people of color and particularly, Gen Z employees, as well as how individu...
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