Melancon leaves AICPA with a legacy of change

Barry Melancon makes an impression when he talks. He honed the skill to grasp big concepts, recall details, and communicate them with poise at the dinner table growing up as the youngest member of a large extended Catholic family. It got him noticed in the profession early on and helped him become CEO of the AICPA.

When Melancon met with the executive recruiter vetting candidates for the job at the San Francisco airport in the summer of 1994, he told him off the bat, “I’m 36 years old and didn’t go to a name university. I’ve never worked in a big firm. I’m not from the Northeast; I’m from Louisiana. You and I both know the AICPA isn’t going to hire a person with that background to be their CEO.”

And then he talked for four hours, sharing with the recruiter what he thought the next CEO at the AICPA should do.

The recruiter had encouraged him to apply, but Melancon had turned him down twice and agreed to the one-hour dinner meeting only because the recruiter told him he’d be one of eight or nine finalists to be interviewed for the job.

Two interviews later, Melancon had the job he would hold until his retirement.

Much has happened since 1995. The world has gone from dialup modems to generative AI. Automation, globalization, and digitalization have changed how business gets done. Five presidents have lived in the White House, and a global pandemic expanded remote work exponentially.

Through those almost 30 years, the AICPA has had one president and CEO: Barry Melancon, CPA, CGMA. During his tenure, Melancon has been more than just a constant presence in times of rapid, sometimes radical change for the AICPA and the accounting profession. He has been an advocate and agent of change, pushing his organization and profession toward a vision of the future he wanted to make reality as quickly as possible.

Kimberly Ellison-Taylor, CPA/CITP, CGMA, the AICPA’s chair in 2016, put it this way: “Barry doesn’t just see around the corner. He lives around the corner.”

Now, as Melancon prepares to retire at the end of the year, a favorite quote of his feels appropriate: “The speed of change will never be slower than it is today.”

“Adaptability is essential to keep pace with the ever-evolving landscape,” said Carla McCall, CPA, CGMA, current chair of the AICPA.

“Still, Barry has always reminded us of our purpose and the keys to our success: transforming with a steadfast commitment to integrity, competence, and objectivity, as we hold the public’s trust.”

TRANSFORMATION ON A GLOBAL SCALE

When Melancon took the helm, the AICPA was a U.S.-centric organization with about 330,000 members and $128 million in annual revenue. Today, in addition to being president and CEO of the AICPA, he also is CEO of the Association of International Certified Professional Accountants, the world’s largest accounting membership organization with about 600,000 members and candidates across 188 countries and 32 offices. Annual revenue reached $340.8 million in 2023.

Melancon was the architect and engine behind the AICPA’s transformation into an international organization. He led the 2012 creation of the CGMA designation in a joint venture with the London-based Chartered Institute of Management Accountants (CIMA). Five years later, the two organizations formed the Association of International Certified Professional Accountants in a move approved by both membership bodies.

“Barry is a force of nature … which brought us together,” said Andrew Harding, FCMA, CGMA, CEO of management accounting for the Association and a CIMA leader during the creation of the joint venture and the Association.

The combination fulfilled a longstanding Melancon goal of giving the U.S. accounting profession a seat at the table for decisions affecting the profession globally. But perhaps even more reflective of his mindset is that he believes it all should have happened sooner. A decade earlier, the AICPA had tried to create a global credential for accounting, but that effort failed.

“I don’t want to relitigate that, but the reality is that had we done that, we’d be even more successful as a profession,” Melancon said.

THE FAST AND FUTURE-DRIVEN

Melancon has always had his eye on the future, and he was in a hurry to get there. Others saw his talent early. He made partner at 25, took the helm of a state society at 29, and was named the AICPA’s top executive at 36 (he was 37 when he started the job).

He quickly recognized that technology would force a fundamental change in accounting, with accountants and CFOs migrating from rote, routine work to new roles in strategy and decision-making. Along the same lines, he saw a need for the AICPA to expand its focus beyond the public audits dominated by large firms and to fully embrace the types of work being done by most CPAs, those employed in small firms or in small companies, working to build the U.S. economy through entrepreneurial efforts sparking successful small businesses.

Melancon ushered in change with a series of landmark initiatives. He oversaw the reinvention of the CPA Exam as a computerized test and established a technology-focused subsidiary. Perhaps most importantly, he launched the 1997 Vision Project, which helped define the modern mission of the accounting profession.

“I wanted the Institute to be an organization that embraces change, embraces the future,” he said. “I was trying to give permission to the profession to succeed in that.”

Jay Rothberg, retired vice president at the AICPA and a friend of more than 40 years, isn’t surprised Melancon has been as successful as he has been. “He’s very driven,” Rothberg said. “He’s willing to take risks. He’s willing to lead.”

ALLIGATORS, SNAKES, AND MUHAMMAD ALI

When Melancon was growing up in south Louisiana, few would have envisioned a career that would take him around the world and to the top of the accounting profession. But the signs were there.

Melancon had a fun childhood in the rural Deep South. He and his friends would camp in the swamp, often chasing off snakes and alligators in the process, but he also had a seriousness and maturity he credits to his upbringing in an extensive, extended Catholic family.

“Family closeness back then was a Southern Catholic tradition, and families tended to stay together. Virtually no one left, no one moved,” he said.

Melancon was the youngest member of the flock, being at least four years junior to all his numerous cousins in the 19 families helmed by his parents, Dudley and Ethel Parker Melancon, and their siblings. When the extended family got together for Friday night meals, he was surrounded by a lot of adults.

“I was always in an adult environment. You’re different when you do that. If you’re going to get a word in edgewise, you better not be talking gibberish. I was always aware of current events, and I’d listened to their current events, and I might have an opinion about it,” he said.

It was his father who helped him brave those conversations. The elder Melancon, who had only a sixth-grade education, urged his son to join in, telling the others: “Let Barry say what he has to say.”

The dinner table talk helped him learn his strengths. His strong memory built his confidence in speaking. And he liked to talk. He liked to think. He liked to be a part of things.

Soon enough, “I was in everything. I was in student government, I was in this, I was in that. I was always president of this and president of that.

That’s just who I was,” he said. The ambition and ideas showed up in memorable ways; a student leader at newly opened H.L. Bourgeois High School, Melancon helped lead an effort to land a high-profile speaker for a student assembly at the school. He and two others set their sights on Muhammad Ali, one of the biggest celebrities in the world. One of the teachers at the high school had a sister who knew Ali and said she could get him to speak at the school. Through that connection, school officials were able to convince Ali to make the speech.

The school then had to convince the school board to allow it despite the protests of some parents, who didn’t approve of Ali because of his refusal to be drafted into the Vietnam War. Melancon was one of two students who argued at a school board meeting that the opportunity to land a speaker of Ali’s stature was too good to pass up and that the event could be held in a way acceptable to parents who didn’t want their children exposed to Ali.

“If parents don’t want their kids to go hear Muhammad Ali, fine,” Melancon recalls telling the board. “We’ll get them in a room. We’ll let them go and sit in the library. They don’t have to go into the assembly if they don’t want.”

The board agreed, and Melancon was on the stage as Ali spoke at the assembly.

A 37-YEAR-OLD PRESIDENT

When he took over as president and CEO of the AICPA, Melancon was young, scrappy, and hungry — and he was not about to throw away his shot to introduce change.

“We had to change how we were and who we were,” he said. “And I was not willing for that to take evolutionary time. That was going to be done quick.”

The profession and the organization faced big challenges in 1995. The disruptions of the digital age had arrived early for accountants, whose math-and-rules heavy work was especially vulnerable to automation and outsourcing. Meanwhile, the AICPA was laboring to improve fractured relationships with its state-level partners in the United States.

So, not long after his arrival, the fresh-faced Melancon promoted new leaders from within, catapulting some promising people over their bosses and intentionally bringing women into the Institute’s leadership.

“I feel so fortunate that he saw something in me, way back when … that I probably didn’t even see in myself,” said Sue Coffey, CPA, CGMA, who received a double promotion early in Melancon’s tenure and serves today as the CEO of Public Accounting for the AICPA and the Association.

“He gave me the flexibility to do what I needed to do to be successful as both a mother and a leader. … How I did something was never dictated … what we were going to do was always collaborative,” Coffey said.

Melancon unleashed those new protégés and colleagues on their missions. 

Some of his focus was on the Institute itself. For example, he moved Rothberg to an expansive new role that he renamed from “member services” to “member satisfaction.”

“He said, ‘You know you’re not going to satisfy every member, every time, but I want you to try,’” Rothberg recalled.

With the new president’s support, Rothberg canvassed the corporate world and came back with a list of ideas. They implemented the most promising ones — like a “secret shopper” program that provided insider access to identify and improve weaknesses. This led to a 70% reduction in the average number of times a caller to the AICPA was transferred before the purpose of the call was achieved.

Melancon also applied that tactic to bigger changes in accounting. 

For instance, he wanted to expand the profession into services beyond audit and tax compliance — a change that seems obvious today, but that was met with resistance early on.

“We need to get permission for this,” other accounting leaders would tell Melancon. “There was a lot of hand wringing and asking, ‘Should we?’” he recalled.

What came next changed the conversation and the course of accounting.

VISION STATEMENT

On a grand scale, Melancon in 1997 would challenge the profession to create a common vision and pathway for the future of accounting, through the launch of a project called CPA Vision.

The effort would grow to include nearly 200 forums, with more than 3,000 participating CPAs — no small feat, since it all happened in person. All of them were debating the future of accounting and how to get there. Melancon’s hope was to have the grand debate, once and for all, about how accounting should proceed in a computerized and outsourced world.

“This was the largest project at the time at the Institute. We had focus groups … in every state,” Melancon said. “I stayed out of it. Our leadership stayed out of it. And it was like, ‘Let’s just see what bubbles up.’”

CPA Vision produced a 45-page vision statement picturing the accounting profession’s path over the next decade-plus, through 2011. It laid out a new definition for the purpose of the accounting profession: “Making sense of a changing and complex world.”

That definition came with a road map to core values, services, and competencies. And it lasted: A successor project, CPA Horizons, found that thousands of CPAs overwhelmingly agreed that the central ideas still rang true — though, as always, with some adjustments.

Now, three decades along, “we’re not arguing about the direction [of the profession],” Melancon said. “And that was the Vision Project.”

FAST STARTER

Melancon was always going faster than most. He skipped a year of high school. He graduated from college in three years with a bachelor’s in accounting and a minor in government. On the day he received his final CPA Exam passing score, he was appointed by his firm to a committee of the Society of Louisiana CPAs. He was still in his early 20s when he became chair of the Louisiana Society’s legislation committee.

Rothberg, then an executive at the state society, said Melancon showed a wide-ranging intellect, often pulling in observations from beyond accounting as they worked on legislative advocacy.

“He was a superstar. He really was. His mind was much broader than accounting. He looked beyond the numbers,” Rothberg said. “He was a visionary.”

By 1984, at age 25, Melancon had achieved his first big goal: He made partner at Bergeron & Co. CPAs, a less-than-20-person firm in Houma, La., his hometown.

By 1987, he had the chance to lead the state society. Rothberg was heading to the AICPA as the director of communications and state society relations, and the Louisiana Society needed to replace him as executive director. Melancon thought he ought to take the gamble.

“My wife, Patty, and I talked about it, and we said, ‘That might be very interesting, and what’s the worst thing?’” Melancon recalled. “If I don’t like it, I can still go back to public practice. It’s not the end of the world.”

Turns out he liked it. By 1995, he had completed a successful stint with the state society and become president and CEO of the AICPA — and, by extension, the boss of one of his former advisers.

“That was pretty remarkable,” Rothberg said.

A FOCUS ON TECHNOLOGY

In the late 1990s, the CPA Vision Project identified technology as the top force affecting accounting, and Melancon wanted the AICPA to respond.

The result was the creation of the organization that would become CPA.com, a new AICPA subsidiary focused on tech transformation for accounting firms.

“Barry, along with AICPA leadership, realized technology was changing the practice of finance and accounting, and to really help firms embrace their full capabilities, the AICPA needed to put together an entity that would be solely focused on helping the profession transform,” recalled Erik Asgeirsson, the longtime CEO and president of CPA.com.

Melancon wanted to create the new entity, in part, so that the AICPA wasn’t beaten to the punch in launching a digital home for information on the profession. He had seen the creation of WebMD by an internet entrepreneur who was not part of the medical profession in 1998 and wanted to avoid something similar happening in accounting.

Melancon has been on the CPA.com board since its inception and board chair for more than a decade. In that time, he has helped CPA.com drive the creation of client advisory services (CAS), now one of the most strategic and high-growth areas for firms. His vision for transforming the audit helped spur the creation of the Dynamic Audit Solution (DAS), an initiative, co-led by the AICPA and CPA.com, that Asgeirs-son considers a perfect example of why CPA.com was founded. Melancon also played an active leadership role in the creation of the .cpa web domain for CPAs globally and the award-winning AICPA Town Hall series.

In 2004, the AICPA worked with NASBA and spent $40 million to computerize the CPA Exam, doing away with the paper-based model. Again: obvious today, resisted at the time.

“It was a hard sell to some traditionalists,” Melancon said. But the reformers used all their tools, including simulations, to prove the idea could work.

In recent years, Melancon has led the profession through a reexamination of the exam model that defines a CPA’s skills and competencies. The new model created through the CPA Evolution project includes a strong core in accounting, auditing, and tax, with a recognition of the impact technology has on each.

“That was pretty profound. I think people will look back on that,” Melancon said. A transition to a new, digital CPE platform also has accelerated education. And since 2022, the DAS has helped firms incorporate advanced technologies and fresh methodologies for audit.

AT THE FOREFRONT OF THE PROFESSION

Melancon called dealing with the fallout from the accounting scandals at Enron and WorldCom the toughest experience of his career. The scandals, which led to the collapse of the Big Five firm Arthur Andersen in 2002, put the entire profession in the crosshairs of politicians pushing for strict regulation.

“I think we tackled the challenge of Enron, WorldCom, and Andersen, and we did it in a way that has long-lasting impact for the good,” Melancon said. “There’s a lot of elements that were in it that people will forget, but the fact that we still have private company auditing standard setting for millions of private companies is critically important to our profession.”

The experience also helped prepare him and the profession for later crises, including the Bernie Madoff scandal and the 2008 financial crisis. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the AICPA provided advice and feedback to Treasury regarding emergency funding programs, and CPAs were essential in helping small businesses access essential money through programs such as the Paycheck Protection Program.

TRANSFORMING THE HUMAN ELEMENT

Melancon’s friends and colleagues speak often about how he has helped others throughout his career.

“What’s increasingly obvious to me is just how many people Barry has … made time for, responded to, helped, was a mentor for, a coach, a sponsor — and I mean in the true definitions of the words,” said Ellison-Taylor, the former AICPA and Association chair and a longtime finance and technology executive.

Ellison-Taylor met Melancon early in her accounting career and has appreciated his support throughout, including on the day she became the first Black woman to chair the AICPA and Association.

“Barry has been consistently a champion for inclusion in the profession, and that’s opening up opportunities for people, regardless of where they come from,” she said.

He also has fostered strong organizational support for diversity and has been a stalwart member of the National Commission on Diversity & Inclusion (NCDI) since its creation in 2012. On the extremely rare occasion he couldn’t attend a meeting of the commission, Melancon was sure to send his thoughts ahead of time and was always willing to find out what he missed. On one occasion, attending the meeting meant Melancon would need to be on camera at 3 a.m. In that instance, Elllison-Taylor convinced him that the NCDI was happy with his pre-meeting feedback. 

“I told him, ‘Barry, we know that you’re here with us even when you are not physically here with us. You’re always supportive,” Ellison- Taylor said. “I have no doubt that if we needed him, that Barry would have joined us and stayed as long as he could. He has done it before.” 

During Melancon’s tenure, he also served alongside Olivia Kirtley, the AICPA’s first woman chair; Okorie Ramsey, the first Black man to hold the position; and the first India-born chair, Anoop Natwar Mehta.

Melancon describes diversity as the key to strong organizational thought and leadership. In everyone he meets, regardless of their roots, he seems to look for the potential that others saw so early in himself.

“Barry has made himself available time and time again to members of our amazing profession. I have enjoyed watching Barry in a circle surrounded by students and patiently answering their questions,” Ellison-Taylor said. “You can’t hide true compassion, true passion, dedication, and a willingness to help people rise through the profession. Barry is the real deal. And if it wasn’t true, we would already know by now.”

A LEADERSHIP LEGACY

Melancon’s impact on accounting will be felt in many ways and for many years to come — through the Association, CPA.com, the NCDI, and other significant accomplishments — such as the creation of two audit quality centers in the United States and the launch of the Future of Finance initiative and the CGMA Finance Leadership Program globally.

One of Melancon’s favorite AICPA initiatives is the Leadership Academy, which has seen nearly 500 CPAs ages 25 to 35 graduate since its launch 15 years ago. He has attended the Academy since the beginning, sharing his knowledge with young leaders and making connections with those who will lead the profession into the future.

“I’d say the greatest lesson I learned from Barry is your legacy is greater than yourself,” said Trisha Nomura, CPA, CGMA, owner of Ascend Consulting LLC and a 2012 Leadership Academy graduate. “Barry has positioned us to be agile enough to respond to change, yet consistent in placing integrity at the forefront of our profession.”

Melancon’s official retirement day is Dec. 31. He plans to remain active in accounting circles, joining boards and working on causes promoting the profession he loves. He also will enjoy more time for golf, sailing, Louisiana State University football, and, most importantly, his family, especially his wife of 45 years, Patty, their son, Connor, daughter-in-law, Claire, and grandson, Ryan.

“My family has been incredibly supportive of me and my passion for the profession,” Melancon said. “I worked through most of my son’s early life, and enjoying my grandson’s early years with his mom and dad will be special.

“I know Patty is looking forward to a much different set of schedules. While not a CPA or CGMA, she has had to be as committed to the profession as me. She has done that with grace and style, but I know she will enjoy our next phase of life a lot more.”

As for the accounting profession, it’s now up to its leaders to run with the lead on the future that Melancon has helped them gain. As Charly Weinstein, CPA, CGMA, CEO of EisnerAmper Advisory Group, wrote upon hearing that Melancon would retire.

“He saw the future of the profession long before anyone else and led us there.”

About the authors

Jeff Drew is the JofA’s editor-in-chief. Andrew Kenney is a freelance writer based in Colorado. To comment on this article or to suggest an idea for another article, contact Jeff Drew at Jeff.Drew@aicpa-cima.com.

AICPA & CIMA MEMBER RESOURCES

Articles

“CEO Melancon, ‘Passionate Advocate’ for the Profession, to Retire,” JofA, May 22, 2024

“Q&A: Melancon Warns of Threats to CPA Licensure,” JofA, March 1, 2024

“Melancon: Making Sense of a Changing and Complex Profession,” JofA, June 1, 2012

Podcast episodes

“Lessons Learned, Future in Focus: Melancon Looks Back and Ahead,” JofA, Aug. 15, 2024

“A Matter of Trust: Melancon Reflects on Nearly 30 Years As CEO,” JofA, Aug. 8, 2024

“Gen AI, Business Model Transformation, and More With AICPA & CIMA CEO,” JofA, Jan. 4, 2024

“Melancon on News and Trends Affecting CPAs,” JofA, Dec. 14, 2023

For more information or to make a purchase, go to aicpa-cima.com/cpe-learning or call 888-777-7077.