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Building a career defined by impact, not accolades or titles

Hosted by Neil Amato

Sponsored by Thomson Reuters

What does career success look like when titles and accolades are no longer the ultimate goal? This podcast episode explores that and other career topics with Lexi Weber, CPA, an AICPA senior manager leading initiatives for emerging professionals.

Weber talks about how she avoids burnout, explains the two phases of mentorship, and lists resources and opportunities for emerging accounting professionals to navigate change and build rewarding careers.

Below are links to several resources discussed:

What you’ll learn from this episode:

  • How the definition of “emerging” professionals might give some people pause.
  • A few strategies Weber uses to avoid burnout.
  • The role of trust in mentorship.
  • Rise2040’s part in helping accounting and finance professionals consider the profession’s future.
  • Weber’s explanation of career success as “more than the titles and the awards.”
  • The types of lessons and resources the AICPA is offering emerging professionals.

Play the episode below or read the edited transcript:

— To comment on this episode or to suggest an idea for another episode, contact Neil Amato at Neil.Amato@aicpa-cima.com.

Transcript

Neil Amato: Welcome to the Journal of Accountancy podcast. Thanks for coming back for another episode. This is Neil Amato with the JofA. I’m speaking today with the AICPA’s senior manager for emerging professionals’ initiatives on a host of topics. You’ll hear that conversation right after this brief sponsor message.

[Sponsor message]

Amato: Welcome back. I’m joined today by Lexi Weber. It is her first time on the Journal of Accountancy podcast. We are glad to have her on to talk about all things emerging professionals initiatives at the AICPA. Lexi, thanks for being on.

Weber: Thanks for having me, Neil. I’m excited to make my debut on the JofA podcast.

Amato: Yeah, we’re glad to have you on. I’ve said your title, more than once, but tell us a little bit more about some of what you do. I guess it’s been almost two years now.

Weber: Yeah, I’m just a month shy of hitting my two-year anniversary with the AICPA and CIMA. And it’s been a whirlwind, but it’s been a lot of fun. I really oversee leadership and career development for our emerging professionals.

And the way we define emerging professionals is anyone with less than 15 years of experience in accounting and finance. And sometimes that gives people pause because they think, well, 15 years in, that’s not emerging anymore. But when you think about the grand scheme of your career, it’s usually about 45-ish years. So, really our emerging professionals are only a third of the way through their career. And I would hope that they don’t have all of the answers at that point. I think sometimes people that are in year 30 or year 40 still don’t have all the answers because there’s so much change that happens in the profession. We’re seeing it at a rapid pace.

So I really get the honor and privilege to work with emerging professionals on what they want for their career and sharing different opportunities that are available in the profession and specializations and just different career paths that they can take while also focusing on those leadership topics that we don’t always take the time to discuss on a day-to-day. So communication, storytelling, resilience, burnout, conflict transformation. A lot of different things that we don’t necessarily get the training on, I get to close the gap for that, which I think is really special.

And we do that through a couple of different programs and activities I oversee. So we have our emerging professionals network. We have our newsletter. We have our Engage365 community, which is a great way for people to engage with each other, no pun intended there, and really just get to connect and talk about what they’re facing in the profession. We also have our EPICenter webcast series on those leadership topics. And then we also have programs like our Leadership Academy, our Success Skills virtual conference, as well as our emerging leaders track at the Accounting Inclusion and Impact Symposium. And that’s only a fraction of what I really oversee, but there’s a lot of great content and great topics in there.

Amato: You’ve definitely made my work tough to make sure I get all those proper resources linked in the show notes, but that’s good to have all those. So, thank you. You mentioned some of those words. Burnout is one that comes to mind. That’s been a popular topic, I think for a long time, just talking about professionals and work. But how do you stay above burnout with all the trains, planes, and automobiles adventures you’ve been on lately?

Weber: Sometimes I’m still figuring it out, but I just like to think about setting healthy boundaries. Just remembering that I always say we don’t save lives, but we do save livelihoods as CPAs. So it’s something that I take a lot of time and consideration in what we do and how profound the work I get to do is and the impact that I can make. But I do have to remember I’m only human. And amongst the travel and the planes, trains, and automobiles, my weekend was a bunch of that. But just taking time to read a book I enjoy or watch a show or sometimes it’s building in some pool time before a conference starts. But setting those healthy boundaries really helps me avoid that burnout, that many professionals face.

Amato: You mentioned emerging professionals and kind of that timeline and maybe thinking about the 15 years can still be emerging. One of the ways that professionals do emerge in their careers is through mentoring. When I bring up mentoring, what comes to mind for you?

Weber: I think there’s two phases that I usually look at from a mentorship lens, because you have those mentors that are formally assigned to you, usually through your employer, and that is turned more toward quarterly check-ins and just some career navigation pieces. And then you have your informal mentors. And I think the informal mentors are usually the ones that are more impactful for you.

And it’s the mentors that evolve from day-to-day conversations that you’re having and people that you trust. And I always come back to that trust element as CPAs. Mentorship is really about trust. It’s about who you trust with the information, your inner thoughts and feelings about what you’re facing in the profession and where you want to go.

But mentorship to me is really lifting as you climb. And I’m stealing that from NABA. But I think it’s something that’s so important that we have to remember that as we advance, we also have to help others advance. So it’s creating opportunities for others and helping them achieve their goals and their career aspirations.

Amato: On the topic of professionals emerging, one of the initiatives that the organization has embarked on is the Rise2040 initiative. What in your mind is that in maybe an elevator pitch? And then also, can you tell me some about the Rise2040-related podcast that’s about to launch?

Weber: Rise2040, for any of our listeners who haven’t heard of it yet, it is a strategic visioning project that the AICPA and CIMA embarked on starting in 2025. And it’s really about creating a future vision for ourselves as professionals and what we want to be experiencing by 2040 in the profession.

So there’s a lot of great elements, because I think we kind of forget in our day-to-day execution of what we’re doing that we have the power and ability to shape what our future looks like. And what we do today of how we’re taking advantage of the opportunities and identifying trends that are happening in the profession, that can really change and elevate what we’re doing as professionals. So I think there’s a lot of great career aspirations that can evolve from identifying these trends and opportunities.

And then we do have an upcoming podcast that we’re going to be launching called Human in the Lead. And that really came out of Rise2040 sentiments from now over 8,800 insights that we’ve collected from professionals across 30 countries, across 110 workshops that we’ve done and growing. And it’s really exciting because it gives us the opportunity to talk about amongst all the change, we have to be directing that change.

So that’s why we call it the Human in the Lead. And we’re going to be launching that by the end of this year where we’re going to have discussions around what we’re facing as a profession and different, actionable ways that we can start to move the needle a little bit on taking action on some of those items.

Amato: Coming up in the middle of this month is the Women’s Global Leadership Summit in San Diego. What do you look forward to about that event?

Weber: It’s such a great community, of men and women, coming together and talking about what women are facing in the profession and how to navigate through some of those challenges and the opportunities that it brings. So it’s an in-person leadership and professional development experience that really brings both accounting and finance professionals together where they can learn, connect, and share ideas with each other. And it’s really about collaboration and community. This actually is our 15th year for the summit, which I’m really excited about. It’s going to be Nov. 16–18 in San Diego. And there’s a lot that happens over those three days.

And I think sometimes the misunderstanding is that conferences are about CPE. And while the sessions are great, it’s really the value of connection and community that you build through going to those conferences and the conversations that are focused around leadership and career development and navigating change and some of the more relevant challenges and opportunities that I mentioned earlier. You know, it’s not traditional sessions. It’s roundtable discussions. We have speed networking. There’s dine-arounds and other great opportunities to meet all of the amazing people that we have in this profession.

Amato: I think that’s a really good summation of the event. And any event is more than CPE, of course, but this one in particular.

One of the words in that event’s title is leadership. I’m hoping you can respond to this. I went to your LinkedIn feed. I looked at some recent posts and one of your recent posts included this phrase that I want you to expand on: “Leadership isn’t about titles or accolades.” Tell me what you mean and tell me more about it.

Weber: Yeah, that’s something that I’ve learned over time. And I think a lot of professionals learn. Think back to high school, when you were going through different clubs and getting different awards, you wanted to do that to build your résumé to get into college. And then you kind of repeated the cycle because you wanted to build up your résumé with community activities and awards and different great things that you were doing to get your first fulltime job.

And then the story kind of starts to rewrite itself because once you enter into the workforce, it’s not always about how many awards you got or how actively involved you are in the community. That’s important. But then it starts to come around the experience that you have and how that fits into different roles. So I think from an earlier career position, your idea of success is how many awards can I get? What can I put my name on? And how can I show I’m actively involved in the community?

And what I’ve understood over the span of my career over the last 12 years is it’s more than the titles and the awards. It’s who you surround yourself with and the conversations you’re having and the impact and meaning and purpose behind your work. So a lot of times I find that my success is measured by, “Is my work impactful?” “Is it meaningful?” “Do I find the purpose and values align with my purpose and values?”

And really identifying like, who am I around, right? Even if I had a title of staff accountant, if you’re sitting in a room with partners and they’re listening to you and they’re asking you for your ideas or you’re working with your CFO and your senior analyst, that success is measured by how people are interacting with you, not by your job title or maybe the awards that you’ve been granted or what your titles are in community events.

Amato: “Senior manager” does not explain really what you do. It doesn’t even encompass all the things you do. As a closing thought, anything else you’d like to talk about that you’re looking ahead to in 2027?

Weber: Yeah, we have a lot of great things that have been in the works. So we mentioned the Human in the Lead podcast. For emerging professionals, we’re also building out an emerging professionals financial playbook, which I’m really excited about. And I can definitely attest to this as an emerging professional. We know in the landscape of economics right now, inflation is at an all-time high, cost of living continues to increase. It’s really hard for emerging professionals specifically to kind of keep up with the Joneses and afford rent and car payments and utilities and food and gas and just basic cost-of-living expenses.

We identified that trend of the fact that emerging professionals aren’t as equipped to deal with some of these that previous generations have. So we built out a playbook that will help emerging professionals with financial decisions and considerations surrounding wages and employee benefits and maybe filling out a W-4 form. Or learning how to invest. Is it obtaining support for CPA licensure? Is it considerations before you get married or maybe before you decide to start a family or even get a pet? I know we’ve done a lot in the JofA on pet care and how that influences financial decisions. I also have a 4-year-old Bernese mountain dog, so I can definitely say I am right there with the rest of them.

But it’s a really great toolkit that provides practical guidance and resources to help emerging professionals start to navigate some of those conversations. And it even makes its way up to, well, career aspirations, right? If I want to start my own business or I want to be a partner, what are those considerations that I have to do? Have you considered life insurance and disability insurance through AICPA Member Insurance Services, which gives a great discount for our members on life and disability insurance and other insurance policies that we need.

You never know when you’re going to get sick. You never know when a family member may get sick and you have to go out on disability or when you’re going to need to tap into life insurance, maybe a whole life policy instead of term. So we’re really excited to launch that toolkit in the next few months. We’re really excited to share that with our emerging professionals community.

Amato: Lexi Weber, we’ve covered a lot of ground. I’d say a solid debut on the JofA podcast. Thank you very much.

Weber: Thanks for having me, Neil.