Episode 58: Advocate For Yourself: Ask For What You Want & Create Your Path With Jennifer Briggs
When opportunities are unequal for women, breaking through a male-dominated industry can be such a feat. Jennifer Briggs, the President and CEO of the Indiana CPA Society, is the fifth CEO in the organization’s 103-year history and the first female in this role. In this episode, she joins Amy Vetter to share how she did it and offer some great insights into the power of advocating for yourself, asking for what you want, and creating your path. Jennifer describes how her upbringing of being the daughter of a father in the army helped her learn to adapt to change. She then shares how learning to communicate and advocate for herself and others has helped her achieve success in her career.
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Advocate For Yourself: Ask For What You Want And Create Your Path With Jennifer Briggs
I interview Jennifer Briggs, President and CEO of the Indiana CPA Society. She is the fifth CEO in the organization's 103-year history and the first female in this role. Briggs joined the Society staff in 2002 as a Special Projects Manager, and subsequently served as Marketing Manager, Marketing Director, Director of Member Services, Vice President of Member Services and Senior Vice President and Chief Operating Officer. Prior to the Indiana CPA Society, she worked at KWK Management Group, serving as Executive Director for five statewide associations. She earned a degree in Marketing from Marian University and an MBA with a focus on Leadership at Butler University in 2015. She is a Certified Association Executive and is a member of the Indiana Society of Association Executives, American Society of Association Executives, and the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants. During this episode, Jennifer describes how her upbringing of being the daughter of a father in the Army, helped her learn to adapt to change. She shares how learning how to communicate and advocate for herself and others has helped her achieve success in her career.
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Jennifer, do you want to give a brief introduction of who you are?
I am Jennifer Briggs. I am the CEO of the Indiana CPA Society, which is an association for CPAs. We have about 7,000 members in Indiana.
Thank you for joining. We like to dive right in to understanding who you are. Where do you come from? Where did you grow up? What did your parents do?
I grew up everywhere. My dad was in the Army. We moved every 1 to 2 years. We moved a lot even for Army. He was in communications. He did host radio programs for the Army network and worked in television also. We lived in Germany for my teen years and that was fun. My mom stayed home and generally would watch kids in the house. What I got from that generally was I like change. I like to move around although I haven't, which is interesting. My mom, always being around kids and babies, I've always loved babies.
How did you end up in Indiana?
My dad was stationed at Fort Harrison, Indianapolis and that's where he retired. The Fort is no longer there. It's a residential development now but it was still active when he retired there. I was at the end of high school, which was an awkward time to move. We moved from Frankfurt, Germany where I had access to all kinds of public transportation and went anywhere I wanted to and did what I wanted to a suburb in Indianapolis. I didn't know how to drive.
Did you speak German?
A little bit when I was there. They moved here. I did not want to be here. I was a grumpy teenager about it. They all left and I'm the only one.
What was it like growing up in Germany?
I thought it was magical. I was twelve when we went there and we lived for two years near Ramstein Air Base. We lived in a little village and that was a little bit scary at first. I was the right age to not be too intimidated by the whole thing. We moved after two years to Frankfurt, a bigger city and I lived there but it's the thing where you grow up there in the circumstances. I did go to school with other military kids and we took a field trip to Anne Frank's house. We were able to go to Vienna and the Hotspur carriage that started World War I. It was a lot of sense of history and opportunity to go places and do things in a way that honestly then I didn't understand that other people didn't do that if that makes sense. I'd never been around people other than Army kids mostly. When we moved to Carmel, Indiana and I met people who had gone to kindergarten together through high school, I had no idea.
You never thought about having a life where you didn't move around that you've been used to moving around and never questioned it.
It never occurred to me. It might have when I was a kid but I don't, it was natural.
When I think about moving around, even if you're all in Germany but you're moving to different cities so you're having to make new friends. Did you have a process you went through to start new each time or to meet people? Was there something mentally that you did so that you had the confidence to do that?
I was incredibly shy as a child. People don't always believe that because I'm chatty now but I was shy and would tend to start a new school and listen for a while. See what was going on and slowly make friends. It’s interesting when you go to school with kids who also move a lot, they're all good at it. You make friends fast and then when somebody is leaving, it sounds bad but don't make a big deal about it. That’s another thing that I thought was interesting.
I do think that's quite a skill because we lived in South Florida when my kids were younger, they were born there but we moved back to Cincinnati when my oldest was twelve. That was part of the problem is he would make friends every year and they'd leave. It was such a transient area and it was hard for him to find kids he liked. As soon as he did, they would move out and the disappointment.
I was fortunate to be with until high school. I'm with these people who have known each other their whole lives. I'm trying to understand what that would be like and trying to figure I'm in a big school and trying to figure out your place. It was challenging.
I would think moving your senior year would be hard.
I graduated early to be done.
That’s an interesting observation. What do you think you did differently because it was a culture you hadn't been a part of before? You understood the Army culture and how to survive. Why was that different?
Everything felt permanent or set. When we moved to Carmel, my parents chose it because they had supposedly the best schools. We had never owned a home. We had always lived in government quarters and they bought a house there and thought they were doing this solid thing. It felt strange to me. I don't know why it was hard to navigate that particular. It's like you were missing something. They all knew something you didn't know or had experienced things you hadn't experienced. I found it fascinating and challenging.
When you think about your parents, they wanted to give you some normalcy that you never have. I talk about that with my kids and social media of how different we view it because we knew life before social media. It's something we added to our life but we know what it is without it, where they were born into it. That is their normal, that their perspective we can never see. It's the same thing. It’s like your parents couldn't see your perspective. They were feeling like, “We haven't given her something because she hasn't had that permanence.”
It’s like, “Where is the subway?” That was strange. It’s like you were saying on social media, that's how I think about technology. I have a ten-year-old, and I know people talk about it all the time, but I truly believe his brain is wired differently. He seems to have zero trouble on the iPad, it's intuitive how they would change this. He goes right into it. I feel like that's part of him always having it versus the way we got used to it.
When you were younger, was there something you wanted to be when you grew up like when you imagined your life?
I wanted to be a teacher at an elementary school as I was around kids all the time. I thought that I wanted to do that. Certainly when I was growing up, The Cosby Show was on and there were women attorneys, Hillary Clinton was an attorney and other professional doctors. The way I grew up, we didn't know a lot of those people. That makes sense. For me, even though I feel like it makes me sound even older than I am, but it didn't occur to me to do things other than maybe be a teacher. I knew I couldn't be a nurse because blood makes me pass out. I feel like those traditional roles for women were still pretty strong with me because that's what I saw. Also with the military, it was mostly the men who were in the military. I knew some women, and so their spouses would travel with them, it's hard to have a job when you move every year or two. A lot of them stayed home. I thought I'd want to be a teacher and do that.
Along those lines, having seen a lot of women staying home, that wasn't of interest to you.
It wasn't that I thought I have to have this career because I didn't know a lot about different careers but it was more I had to take care of myself. My dad was not an officer, we had a nice life but we were not well to do by any means. I knew I had to take care of myself in some way. I'm a romantic if you will. I always wanted to find the right person. I waited for a long time.
You’re going to rush to get married or have a family. Probably with your background too, you were worldly.
I didn't think of it that way at the time. I'm grateful to have that experience of living in another country and visiting other countries as a young person because I don't think of the US necessarily as the center of the universe. I did not realize that until I got older, how different my perspective was because I'd seen people living their lives, going to jobs, going to schools who've spoken a different language and lived in a different place. I'm grateful for that.
I get what you're saying. I had a global job and that was one of my biggest epiphanies starting that job. I remember it being 4th of July, and I turned to my friend and I'm like, “This holiday feels different.” I've now been to all these countries and meeting accountants all over the world and seeing everybody working as hard having the same dreams. I think a lot of times when you grow up in the US and it's not something intentional but you think like, “Why wouldn't they live in the US?” When you have more experience, maybe you're like, “This place is amazing. I would live here.” There are different governments, situations, stuff like that. For the most part, people are people and you stop seeing differences in that way. The history and the way it is is different than what we're used to.
You realized maybe I didn't when I was young but as you get older, this country, we're babies, young. It makes you prouder of all we do and the influence that we have. You realize like none of our buildings are ever going to be as old as they are in England, France. I was glad when we first moved to Germany and lived in that little village, our landlord had an apartment there and had a farm across the street. That family became close to us and I got to see people's lives in a way that I didn't expect. The grandma would come out every day and talk to me at the bus stop in German. I didn't know what she was doing but we would hand gesture our way through a conversation.
Advocate For Yourself: Few things are sacred or permanent, that you can't change them.
Now, you're in Indiana. Did you go to Indiana University? What ended up happening there?
I went to Purdue in Indianapolis, it's called IUPUI. It was at the time almost entirely like a commuter school. Now people live on campus. I went there and I worked full-time.
What did you go in for, to be a teacher?
That's what I started. I ended up early on realizing I didn't want to do that. I did some not technically student teaching but the same idea. I realized that I liked children. I don't want to have to teach them but I just want to hang out. I thought this is not going to work for me. Like a lot of people, I'm jealous of those people who know in middle school what they want to do and what they want to be. I had no idea. I was working and going to school and I kept getting promoted at my job. That was more interesting than freshmen sophomore college classes.
What were you doing?
I worked in insurance. I was a ridiculously young insurance agent. I did an underwriting and I worked on high-risk dwellings and mobile homes and motorcycles. I still can't believe they let me do that but I did.
How did you get that job? Was it posted in school?
I don't even remember. It might have been a friend told me about it or something or I found it in the newspaper back when we used to do that. I worked there for several years and realized I didn't want to do that. I kept having to travel more and work more. I'm twenty years old and it's hard to go to school and travel. I saw an ad in the newspaper for an insurance association. It’s the National Association of Mutual Insurance Companies, which is headquartered in Indianapolis. I went there and got a job in their communications department. I honestly got sucked in hook, line and sinker with the whole association concept. I have never done anything else. I thought I wanted to try something else. I went to work in philanthropy and didn't even last a year. I enjoy asking people for money all the time.
What did you enjoy about association work?
It felt like if you could try it, you could do it. There are a lot of different things you could do. You work with people. I enjoy getting to know different people. Honestly, it's the basic ‘we're better together’ concept is near and dear to my heart. I didn't know associations, I didn't know what they did. Once I learned about what they do and how everyone is working together to make each other better, it struck a chord.
How did you get to the level you did? What kind of experience?
This is what I always tell people because it's the truth. When I worked there, it happened to be a time when a lot of people were quitting, so I would apply for whatever new job was open. I moved around then. Because it's a national association, we had about maybe 60 people in that office and then a DC office. I kept getting a different job. Eventually, I had an influential supervisor, even though I've told her this, we don't stay in touch now but she left to go work for the University of Phoenix when it was brand new.
I was in my early 20s and she was maybe 30, but she has worked at other places. She is professional. She said, “You can do my job.” She was the education director. “Tell them, our bosses, that you want to give it a try. They'll pay you less than they pay me. They'll probably let you try it.” They did. I'm not sure to this day, I don't think I would have sought out her job. I was still finishing school. She made it sound easy, “Ask for it. You want this much money. It's less than I make so they'll be happy. Do it.” I was fortunate to be in the right place at the right time.
What's the worst thing that could happen? They say no.
I'm amazed that I did it because that was not like me. She seemed confident that it would work, that I tried it and it did.
How did you feel taking on that job?
For me, any new job is exciting. Even at the society, I've been here a long time, I think I've had eight titles. I loved learning about all of it. Early in my career, that was probably a challenge I had. I would learn everything about my job, get intense about it, work hard, and I would be done with that job. I stayed there for five years and then had various jobs. I had another job after the education director, one where I had to travel a lot and I was not old enough to rent a car because you had to be 26. People would have to finagle this whole system so I could rent a car when I went places. At that point, I worked with a subsidiary of the association that did insurance arbitration where insurance companies would argue over who's going to pay. I worked with lawyers who would go through these cases. Long story short, it was fascinating. I still have no idea why they let me do it.
How did you end up with the Society?
I went to the apartment association and I learned all about apartment, managers, owners and maintenance. I did education and membership there. Most people don't know a lot about it and I find it fascinating.
That was a big part of my upbringing, the apartment association. My mom owned maid services, so she was on the vendor side of it. For a while, she was the president of the vendor side at the chapter in Cincinnati. You don't know many people that know that association. I went to the events, I learned all about trade shows there.
I learned that if you manage a large apartment complex, you're responsible for millions of dollars’ worth of property and at the time, they didn't pay them that well. I learned about maintenance. We did classes for people who maintain apartment complexes and that kind of thing is interesting.
I confirm being a CPA because my mom would take me with her to apartment association events. When I was in high school, I started asking, “What do you think I should major in? What do you think of different property managers?” They're like accounting. Over and over they said accounting. They're like, “If you knew accounting, you'll understand business.” Anything in the middleman area is always going to be small margins.
We were focused on the numbers. I left there and I went to an association management and lobbying firm. I was the association manager and I worked with a couple of people who were lobbyists. I didn't lobby at the time. I communicated the legislative stuff that was going on. I was the executive director of five tiny state associations. Back to my liking to learn things, I was the Executive Director of the Indiana Marriage and Family Therapy Association, the Indiana Cemetery and Funeral Alliance.
One thing I've learned about is there is an association for everything. That's been the most eye-opening thing being a speaker is like, “There's an association for that.”
Recreation for first departments, athletic trainers and occupational therapists.
Those are a lot of random occupations to learn about.
I loved learning about all those different things. It was challenging because I had worked for an association directly. Now I worked on a contract basis for small associations that didn't have that much money. What was hard for me was I could see what they needed to do. I was constantly not getting in trouble but like, “That’s not in the contract, Jennifer.” I wanted to do what would help them. I met a staff member here at the Society. Her name is Jill Doyle and she was facilitating a study group for the CAE, which is the Certified Association Executive credential. I was in the study group and she brought her boss, Gary Ballinger, who was the Society CEO for 30 years, to a study group to talk to the group. He called and I think I argued with him, I know I did. I disagreed with something that he said. He was the person who was like, “I like that. Come and work here.”
I got a flashback to one of my first audit clients was a cemetery. It was a funeral home, but the way they would classify it from an accounting perspective was pre-need or at-need, instead of saying someone died. It’s interesting how different industries classify their prospects.
One association I forgot that I worked with was the community pharmacists. These are people who owned pharmacies in small towns, not CVS, not Walgreens, independent, which we don't have as much anymore. These guys were smart. They were entrepreneurs who were pharmacists.
You get fascinated by knowing what each industry does. How do you think that's helped you working with CPAs, learning all these different professions and moving around as far as leading an organization like this?
Most associations have the same basis, which is their mission. It doesn't matter what you are representing. You are trying to make them better at what they do through education, through government relations and lobbying, communicating with them about what's happening in the world and how it might affect them. I had a strong basis in the fundamentals of an association. I think that helps here. Moving around a lot though also helped me realize that you have to make your own change. This is going to sound bad, this is what I say. My friend, Jill, who introduced me to the Indiana CPA Society had worked here for twelve years. After I was here about a year, I said to her, “If I ever work here twelve years, I will jump out the window.”
Many people walk in, you are not the first person on this show to talk about working at a CPA Society and feeling that way. People stay forever. They start appreciating the customer.
Advocate For Yourself: Explain things to people and communicate. If you don't know where they are, you can't get them where they need to be.
What I realized was that every place you work is crazy and you have to find the crazy that works best for you. With that, I am not calling CPAs crazy. I love what they do. I love the variety. It's CPAs, not a CPA. They do everything. I get to learn still about what everyone does and they're good people, they're nice people. Part of what I say is because my predecessor had a similar attitude to mine, which was that few things are sacred or permanent that you can't change them. He was good at being able to say, “I know we've done this for twenty years but it doesn't make sense anymore, and we're going to stop doing it. Here's what we're going to do instead.” That's where I like to be is where you break things and rebuild them. That helped a lot in my staying here. I had a lot of different job titles but I also knew that there was always an opportunity to try something new.
I'm going to go back to something you said about moving, which I think is probably helping you be successful as a leader. You were quiet in the beginning and listening. How do you find yourself doing that?
A big part of what we do in associations is to try to explain things to people and communicate. If you don't know where they are, you can't get them where they need to be. It's practice the listening that I'm always working on. It helps a lot to hear what their pain points are. What are their challenges? What are they seeing? That you can meet them where they are to some extent and then challenge them based on knowing them.
Can you think of the year where you've had to put that into play?
All the drama at the beginning related to the profession at the beginning of the pandemic with tax deadlines needing to change and with CPAs needing to be considered an essential service so they could continue to help their clients. The PPP and all that loan process, it was busy, a lot to learn in a short period. My number one goal was to try to reach out to people even though I knew they were busy, I wanted to know what was happening from their perspective so that we could do the best we could. I was always concerned that we weren't doing enough. The only way to know is to ask. I did spend a lot of time calling people in public accounting, calling people in the industry, trying to find out what was happening in their world.
I learned things that maybe I wouldn't think about, for example, essential services. You think, “CPAs work on computers. Can't they work at home? Why do they need to be able to go to their office?” A lot of smaller firms in smaller towns do payroll for businesses that are their clients, and they need to be on their secure systems. They can't do it from anywhere. Stuff like that that I don't think most people would think about. You have to talk to them to find out why.
I always talk about this with my teams too. Sometimes there are these customers that represent 1% but those are the ones you hear from. Everyone goes off what they say, “Who else have we asked? Who have we reached out to that doesn't yell?” You learn these other things and then you may learn we've talked to ten other people and it's an issue for them.
There was a conversation we had about an issue, “Can you talk to a few more people? Can we be sure this is a long-term problem or a short-term problem and that kind of thing?” I think listening is important.
It's important. I do think it is a difference in leadership because there are lots of research about how people are afraid to speak up as leaders go higher and higher to speak up to them. If you're not a good listener, you can get removed from where the business is, what's happening without keeping your finger on the pulse of it and going out and doing your listening tour. Not depending on everyone else because everybody's got an agenda and I need to be educated as well. It’s rolling up your sleeves and willing to get dirty.
The day that I stopped thinking I need to learn more is the day I don't work here anymore because that's the part that’s most interesting. I used to do these events called CPA Conversations. Instead of an update, I would have information to update our members on the profession, but I wanted it to be a conversation. Much value was gained with those conversations and you could even introduce me, “I talked to you earlier and we have this solution.” That's been hard during this virtual world because I don't know if our members are people, humans in general, but it's more challenging to get that conversation between strangers in an online environment.
It's not as personable.
I have to do a lot more individual outreach.
Good tips in here and also understanding how the skills we develop when we're younger end up coming to fruition later. You might have stayed in Indiana but made a lot of transitions in jobs.
That's true.
I like to end with a rapid-fire segment where you pick a category: Family and friends, money, spiritual or health.
Spiritual.
The question is things or actions that I don't have that I want with my spirituality?
I would say a consistent practice of meditation. When I say spiritual, I mean how I feel like a person and what I do in the world. I have noticed lately that it does help to take minute breathing. I know with your yoga practice, and I have tried hard over the years and go through times when I'm all about the yoga, but I find the breathing and the meditation are incredibly helpful to me. I would like to do that more.
Things or actions that I do have that I want?
Patience. Some people on our team here might disagree. I do feel like something that's come from working in one place for a long time is that you see things come and go and it's going to be fine and we're going to figure it out.
Things or actions that I don't have that I don't want as far as my spirituality?
This is maybe pandemic-related, the busyness. I don’t have that. I have had some serious conversations with some of my colleagues around the country about, “What are we going to keep from this?” I miss people so much, however, having the ability to not go has helped me remember myself and my family.
I think too, are you busy to be busy? What's come down is what are the most important things to work on? Just working on things to work on them, you have to figure out now like, “What time is intentional?”
“What meetings need to be?” We've talked about that quite a bit and I joke, but I say it like without going to breakfast, lunch and awards dinners, my job does not take as much time like before.
Advocate For Yourself: Be honest with yourself. Own your part in any situation.
Is there anything you want to make sure people leave this conversation with that we haven't talked about?
Something that is important to me and is part of listening is being honest with yourself. Owning your part in any situation is something that's a big part of how I work, how I lead and how I help people.
Thank you for taking the time to share and it's been great. I’m sure there are lots of lessons that people can take away from it.
Thank you so much, Amy.
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Our discussion with Jennifer led us to different countries and the whole different perspective of what it's like to grow up with a father in the Army and the change that happens in your life. I'd like to start with a word that Jennifer said when she moved to Germany, she thought it was magical. That's such a great word to use with things that happen in our lives that often we just go through the motions of making a change, but not open our eyes to the magic of a moment. That word 'magical' can then change how you approach something and go about it. Her experience of experiencing the history of where she lived and taking excursions and meeting new kids was something that she enjoyed, even though she describes herself as shy.
What she talked about was as she went into a new experience, instead of talking, she would listen for a while and then slowly make friends. This is a good lesson in anything that we do, when we start by listening, whether it's work relationships, family relationships, we start hearing what's important to other people. We can incorporate that back to see what our commonalities are, where we can enjoy one another or help one another, instead of just going in and talking and not listening. It was a good lesson to take through her life, especially in the work that she does to advocate for change, to help accounting firms and corporations change, but the members of the association as well.
When you listen as a skill, it can help as a leadership skill to make sure that you are addressing the pain points that people are having and not just assume what they are. She took on many different roles in her career that eventually led her to the Indiana CPA Society. All of those roles were important in learning the work of associations, and that she had some outside perspective before coming into a leadership role there and moving up through the ranks of there. With anything we do, that outside perspective, whether you've been at the same company or firm your entire career, it's still important to network outside of the work that you do so that you can get perspective of a different culture, different organization, how people think and so forth. It's one of those things in life is we only know what we know and we can think that is the whole environment when there are actually maybe five other things that we're unaware of, that we can encounter without the experience of looking for what those things are.
Being open to your environment, not only in what you do, but outside of what you do and seeking out those people that can help teach you those things is important. That's that whole life of continuous learning that we need to put in place to make sure that we do succeed, whether that be in our personal lives, our careers. That there's never a time that it is a time to just rest and say that things will never change again, because the one truth in life is that they will always change whether that's personal or in our careers.
The other important thing that she talked about as she moved through her career is being open to whatever jobs are available so that you learn different aspects of a business. You don't pigeonhole yourself in one direction. You can have the experience that would be helpful and the perspective in whatever role you're in or other departments that might be something that would have been foreign to you if you hadn't had experience working in that. Being able to bring in all those different perspectives in the job that you do helps with your success.
One of the things she talked about was as she was moving up into senior levels, there was a director that she worked for that says to her, "You can do my job," and told her to tell management that she wanted the job and that she wanted to give it a try, which was a great lesson in both ways. As a mentor or a leader, we should always be looking for who could do the job that we do, and make sure we're grooming them and helping them to get there. We always want someone ready to take our jobs so that we can do other jobs and be able to grow in our careers. We never want to block people from learning and growing.
The second part, it wasn't like this director just went and advocated for her on her own, what she did was say, "You need to advocate for yourself as well." Think about it as when you take that leap and tell people that you want more responsibility, that you're looking for that, they're going to give you the feedback that you need. Maybe not that you want, but that you need that will tell you what experience that you need to have, or they're going to think in their heads, "I wouldn't have thought of you for that role, but you do have the experience. I like your work ethic." The most important thing is that you're working hard and then take that person under their wing into that role.
It doesn't mean we have to be ready for every role that comes available. What it does mean is we have to speak up that we're looking for it, be open to learning, which is that continuous learning. Not feel like we have to be perfect in everything that we do, that we're open to learning it and we ask for what we want in life so that we can get the path there because maybe you're not ready, but by asking, you're going to understand the path to get there so that you can start preparing for it as well. She also talked about her transition in the accounting profession and understanding the psyche of a different profession and how to work. One of the things that was an overriding skill that she found in her own life that she was brought up with, but also in association work that was so important is to explain and communicate.
Explaining and communicating is an important thing that if you don't know where you are, you can't help. If you're not asking the questions, there's no way for you to help somebody else be able to achieve what they want, but understanding their pain points can help you make sure that you are fulfilling the needs of the people that you're working with or the customers that you're working with. Rather than assuming what somebody needs or listening to the loudest voice or complaint, sometimes that might be an anomaly and most people are fine and there's another issue that's under the covers that people aren't speaking up. I think that was a big thing with her was being open to the conversations that you need to have. Connecting with people, networking, looking for where you can get resources, and then being honest with yourself that you own your part in any situation that you're in, and how you reach for the vision and the goals that you have.
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About Jennifer Briggs
Jennifer Briggs, CAE, MBA, is president and CEO of the Indiana CPA Society. She is the fifth CEO in the organization's 103-year history, and the first female in this role. Briggs joined the Society staff in 2002 as the special projects manager and subsequently served as marketing manager, marketing director, director of member services, vice president - member services, and senior vice president and chief operating officer. Prior, she worked at KWK Management Group serving as executive director for five statewide associations, the Indiana Apartment Association and the National Association of Mutual Insurance Companies (NAMIC). She earned a degree in marketing from Marian University and an MBA with a focus on leadership at Butler University in 2015. She is a Certified Association Executive and is a member of the Indiana Society of Association Executives (ISAE), American Society of Association Executives (ASAE) and American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA).
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