Every business’s goal is to have happy clients. This means doing what it takes to serve them well and above their expectations. As a woman in the workforce, Jackie Cardello had to learn to deal with growing a family and keeping her job. Today, she is the President and Managing Partner of GRF CPAs & Advisors, and she talks with Amy Vetter about her journey to the top. Jackie shares that as a woman, there is more pressure and expectations when it comes to balancing work, especially in an environment that is primarily male-dominated. In this conversation, she inspires women that they, too, can be successful in their jobs while raising kids and having a life outside work. Jackie highlights the importance of communication and accepting the fact that you can have it all if you want it. You just have to figure out a way and be flexible with it.

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It Doesn't Matter When, Where, Or How You Work If Your Clients Are Happy With Jackie Cardello

Welcome to this episode of Breaking Beliefs, where I interviewed Jackie Cardello. She is CPA and President and Managing Partner of GRF CPAs & Advisors, a leading CPA firm with international reach headquartered in Washington, DC. While providing leadership and guidance for the firm, Jackie focuses on strategies that elevate GRF as a premier provider of accounting assurance, tax, and advisory services to nonprofit organizations, small businesses, and individuals. She also spearheads initiatives that focus on recruiting and mentoring young CPAs, as well as programs that promote diversity, equity, and inclusion. She is a board member of CPAmerica, a national association of CPA firms in the United States. She has a passion for animals and children and has served in various capacities for organizations, such as Tree House Child Assessment Center of Montgomery County and Girls On the Run of Montgomery County. She is a graduate of the University of Maryland College Park and a member of AICPA, MACPA. GWSCPA, and the National Association of Professional Women.

She was recognized by the Greater Washington Society of CPAs with their Women To Watch Award, Emerging Leader category in 2013. During my interview with Jackie, we discussed her journey in the accounting profession as a driven career woman and mother. We discussed the struggle she had as she was growing up with her career, wanting to have it all, and the barriers that she had to break through with herself and the people around her to become a managing partner of her firm eventually. I hope you enjoy this interview and take a lot away from it. Please share this interview with someone that you think will help as well. Also, subscribe to this show and like this episode, so others will see it pop up for them too.

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I’m with Jackie Cardello, the Partner in Charge at GRF CPAs. Jackie, would you like to start off?

Thank you, Amy. I’m Jackie Cardello. I am the President and Managing Partner of GRF CPAs & Advisors. I’ve been with GRF for a very long time. I started my career there as a senior auditor and I’ve called it home ever since. I’m now managing the firm. Working with my team is what I like to say. I think of managing the firm as leading the firm. It’s leading a team of individuals. Without the entire team, we couldn’t be successful. It’s a full-service CPA firm. We provide accounting advisory, attestation services, tax services, consulting, and a variety of services to different businesses. Our cornerstone is nonprofits. The three founding fathers who built the firms started with the belief that giving back to our communities was of utmost importance and that was a foundation of GRF CPAs & Advisors. It is a big part of who we are now. Our culture is about being very active in the communities that we serve and giving back to those, paying it forward, and helping out other individuals with their missions and their businesses.

That sounds amazing. I’m looking forward to getting to that through our interview. This interview is about you, how you began in your life, and career as well. To start off, where were you born? What did your parents do? That sort of thing when you got started.

I was actually born in Burbank, California. My parents relocated when I was very young, so I call Maryland home. Gaithersburg, Maryland is where I grew up and I went to a local high school there. I also went to the University of Maryland. That’s where I got my undergrad in Accounting. My father happens to be a retired CPA. He was also in the profession working for the government. My mom was a homemaker. She was a stay-at-home mom. She had the most important job of all, but she was college-educated. She was one of my biggest supporters who always told me, “This is a great option if you choose it. However, I want you to have options. I want you to pursue an education, whatever it is that you want to do, and we’re here to help you.” That stuck with me.

Interestingly, my father and I are alike but different. There’s a lot of things we share but there are some things. For example, when I was old enough to figure out what it was that he did, I thought it was incredibly boring. I will be the first to say, “I am not one of those people who wanted to be an accountant or CPA from the time I was a little kid. It was never on my radar.” I wanted to be a vet. I wasn’t very good in Science then I wanted to go to law school, which still a part of me wishes I would have done that, for the experience, I was good at, believe it or not, both Math and English, so I was torn there.

English was one of my favorite subjects in college and I thought, maybe I’ll major in English and go to law school, and then I had one of my advisors say to me, “Unless you want to teach, why don’t you have a backup?” Teaching was certainly an option as well. They said, “Think about what else did you like to do? You’re good at Math. You’re good with numbers. Do you want to try something else? That way, if you decide not to go to law school, you have a backup plan.” I went into general business and took my first accounting course that was it for me. I had this aha moment. I had a great professor. I loved it. I thought, “This is way more interesting than I thought it would be.” It clicked with me. I changed my major and ended up majoring in Accounting and pretty much decided early on in my college career that I wanted to go into public accounting specifically and get my CPA.

I had the complete opposite experience. I always thought it was going to be a CPA and I took my first accounting course. I was like, “What did I do?” I did not get it. I did horrible on my first exam. I remember going to the teaching assistant. There were probably 400 people in the class and the teaching assistant was like, “You’re going to put this up in your office one day.” This one whole exam. I was like, “I had always reconciled my bank accounts since I was twelve years old.” The debits and credits did not make sense to me at all whatsoever. It was the opposite of what I had done.

That’s great but yet, here you are.

Why did you want to be a vet?

It’s a passion of mine. I’ve always loved animals. I’ve always had numerous different kinds of pets and rescued little animals from baby bunnies who look like their nest was abandoned, baby birds that fell out of their nest, dogs, lizards, ferrets, and turtles, we’ve had it. I was always obsessed with animals. I had a rabbit, too. I just thought that would be a fun and rewarding career.

Why did you change later?

I’m terrible with the sciences. I tried the sciences. Science is not my friend. I learned early on that numbers are my friend and not Science, unfortunately.

What was your father doing and why you got relocated from California to Maryland?

He was working for a private organization out there. I honestly don’t recall the name of the company, but they transferred him from California to Maryland. How do you make that transition? It was a transfer for his job. He ended up finding a job with the Department of Energy and ended up spending his career there.

What did he do for them?

He was an internal auditor.

Did you have any experience with him? I know you thought what he did was boring, but you thought it was boring.

I never went to work with him. I heard him talk about it and from what little I knew about accounting, I thought, “That’s boring. Who would do that? Why would you do that for a living?” The areas where we are different is that he is very introverted and I am not. I kind of was growing up. I know this may come as a shock but I was actually very shy growing up. I came out of my shell, I would probably say, after high school.

What had changed for you?

Should I know the answer to that? Probably exploring different options, gaining confidence in my decisions, and getting to know people differently. I don’t know what clicked to change that, but it might’ve been a maturity thing for me. I do know that when I did start going to college and started realizing that this is what I’m good at and this is what I want to do, I felt more confident with myself and my future, so I’m sure that probably had something to do with it.

Did you ever go to your dad about changing to accounting and what his thoughts were?

Yeah. He was, of course, all for it. He was surprised, but he said, “You cannot go wrong with a degree in accounting or finance, no matter what you do in life, you will always have a use for it even if you decide to go to law school or whatever you want to do, teach. It’s a great degree to have. There’s always a need for accountants.”

Did you have any brothers and sisters?

Younger brother.

What does he do?

He’s an electrician. He took a different road. He did some college. He started going down the road of pursuing a pre-med degree and that halted and decided that he wanted to take a break from that and took a different approach.

He didn’t like Science either.

No, we’re not a science family.

When you were switching over to accounting, were you thinking you were going to be doing what your dad did or did you have a different vision for it?

I knew that I wanted to be in public accounting. Talking to various different people in the profession and talking to professors who had been in both public and private, and doing some research and following what people in the industry were doing. I became interested in and back then, it was the Big Eight, being in the headlines and getting more interested in what does public accounting mean. What does it mean to be in private? What’s the big difference? Talking to different people who had done both, I thought I’m a people person, so I thought I would enjoy that more because it gives you exposure to different people, you’re on different assignments, and you’re serving clients and that part was interesting to me.

Did you start with GRF from the beginning?

No, I did not. I actually started in private industry right out of college. The big firms, in particular, had a hiring freeze, so there weren’t a lot of jobs in accounting quite different than what we have now. It was harder then to find a job. I found a job in private working for a property management company through a friend. I did that for a little while and I’m glad I did, because I quickly realized that I was doing the same thing over and over every day and I was getting bored with it. After two years, I started looking again into going to work for a public accounting firm.

I found a firm in DC and went to work for them. That was Langan Associates. They subsequently merged into CLA. That’s where I got my start in public accounting and, John Langan was and is still one of my biggest mentors. I will give a shoutout to him because he was an incredible mentor and a very successful visionary. He actually had a big impact on why I chose to stay in the profession even after starting a family when it was more difficult than it is now for women in the profession. He started in the basement of his townhouse and he was looking for people who just wanted to work. He started figuring out that he had some college grads but he also had prior retirees, women who would raise their children and wanted to get back into the workforce, and working mothers who wanted to work either part-time or have a flexible schedule. He gave them the opportunity.

When I went to go interview with him, it was a very small firm. It was ten people, basically him and his team were all women. I thought this is interesting. This is very different from what I’ve been seeing when I’ve been interviewing and doing my research on the firms. I met with a couple of the managers and I thought this is a very neat thing. I think he was very progressive because his motto was, “I don’t care when you work or how you work, just keep the clients happy. Do your job. Keep your clients happy.” If you need to come in earlier or later, leave early for a doctor’s appointment, or something like that, he was never looking over our shoulder but entrusting and enabling his team, which was brilliant on his part.

Very ahead of the time. How did he monitor workflow and project management?

He had a good team. He made an investment in people. He hired managers and completely entrusted them. He wasn’t a control freak. He was the business developer and entrusted his managers to run the engagements, develop their team, mentor their team, and empowering them. He was able to attract the seniors and staff who were interested in a career in public accounting, saw the growth, the women rising up through the firm, becoming partners, moving on, and developing. Their careers were flourishing that from day one, he started building a team that he empowered. Empowering was key.

How long were you there and why did you leave?

I want to say I was there a little over two years. I was doing mostly outsourced accounting. That was a big piece of his practice. He had figured that out early on as well that this is a big need that needs to be filled even more so now. We did do some audits and I got a very broad, wealth of experience there because I did 990s, the tax work, and the outsourced accounting. I learned the client side of it, the GL, operations, and bookkeeping. I did learn the audit piece and the audit was what was attractive to me for whatever reason. I was young and I wanted to do something different. I happened to have a friend who was working at back then at Gelman, Rosenberg & Freedman, doing business with GRF CPAs & Advisors now. She kept calling and bugging me and saying, “We need people. Please come to work for us.” I wanted something a little closer to home as well because I was working in DC. I wanted to shorten my commute a little bit. I was young and I thought, “Let me try something different.” That’s how I ended up at GRF. I came in as a senior auditor and the rest is history.

You said you started a family during this time?

I did. I worked my way up to manager and early on, I decided that I was, that I wanted to be a partner. That was one of my career goals. I had some fabulous mentors and my mentors, Michael Freedman being one of my most valued mentors. He is one of the founding partners of GRF and he was a fantastic mentor. He saw something in me early on and started grooming me for partnership track. He told me, “There’s a career in public accounting. You’ve got what it takes.” I worked a lot back then. It was a different environment.

What does that mean to groom you for partnership track?

He’s starting to give me more responsibilities. Having me attend board meetings, run board meetings, go to proposal meetings with clients, did a lot of technical research, developing templates and audit procedures, managing and preparing myself to be in charge of clients, and having relationships. He was introducing me to the clients and helping me to develop a relationship with them. That gave me the confidence and the experience to continue to move forward and develop in my career.

How were you able to manage that starting a family?

When I was a manager and I had my first child, I had this epiphany that there’s more to life than work because that’s pretty much all I did. When I had my first child, my son, I don’t want to say distracted from work but it shifted my focus because for me, it was all about my career. I loved working and that’s what I did. When I brought this little person into the world, I was blown away by the attachment that I had. I’m enjoying being a mom and enjoying being with this little person. I would drop him off at daycare and he was at a very small daycare. It was very fortunate. It was like having a nanny. She had 2 or 3 kids, and she would take them to the library and to the puppet shows. They would go to parks and they’d be going on a beautiful day to the zoo and I was going to work.

I was thinking to myself, “There’s got to be a happy medium.” I dropped him off, I’d go to work, and I would feel like, “Is this what I want to do?” I scaled back my hours and started working part-time. That enabled me to spend more time with my son, then three years later, I had another child. That’s my daughter, my youngest. I had shifted my priorities over that time. I started feeling like a career is not the most important thing to me. My children and my family are, and if I can’t have both, then maybe I’m willing to sacrifice my career.

I had actually gotten to that crossroads where I wasn’t sure that I was going to stay in public accounting. I continued to work part-time but there are a lot of days when I felt like I feel conflicted and I don’t feel like I’m doing both of my jobs well because I’m distracted. There were a lot of conversations and it was set out loud that, “She has a family. She has young children. I don’t know if she can be a partner. I don’t know if she can work the hours. She’s going to be distracted. She might have to leave or stay home to take care of a sick child.” There’s a lot of truth to that.

Fortunately, now, there’s a lot of help between partners who have children but still, even now, a little bit of a perception that women are primary caretakers. When they have children, their minds are constantly focused on their families you’re not able to focus on your career in the same way. During those several years where I was working as a manager and, still enjoying, obviously being with GRF and raising my children, I was wondering I would go flip flop from I love my career. I know I can do this. There’s a way to help both. Another time I would feel like it’s not worth it. My family is more important. I don’t want to miss my kids growing up, but I stuck with it and I kept thinking, “I’m going to have both.”

There’s a lot of women who still don’t feel like they can have both because of some antiquated expectations and perceptions about women in the workforce. At the time, all of our partners and the women who became partners were expected to work full-time. That was the expectation. You’re a partner, you worked full-time. If you want to come back and be considered for partner, you’re going to have to go back full-time. After my daughter started preschool, I started thinking about it again and my wonderful mentor, Michael Freedman said to me one day, “Are you sure you don’t want to be a partner? You really should rethink it. I believe you could make this work.”

I started thinking about it again and made a decision that I am going to figure out how to make this work. I am going to figure out how to have both. I did go back to work full-time and did a lot of juggling and multitasking but I made it work and I stuck with it. There were numerous people who would tell me. It could have been peers and it was relatives or friends, who would say, “Is this all worth it? You don’t have any time to yourself. How are you going to make this work? Daycare is so expensive. You have this long commute. Your job is so demanding. It’s only going to get harder as they get older. It’s easy now.”

I was hearing all of this. I’m taking it all in and then there were other others who would say you can absolutely do both. My mom was one of them, my big cheerleader, and she would say, “I’ll help you, but don’t give up your career. You can do both. You can do this.” As time went on, I realized that it will be challenging and it will be work. I felt like I had a perception that I had to change. I set out to prove that it’s okay to have a family, have another focus, and if I need to come in late in the morning because I have a daycare issue or leave early because my child has a doctor’s appointment, and take off when the kids have a day off of school. It’s okay to have a day off to be home with them.

I pretty much laid my path. Sometimes, there was resistance because I worked different hours. There was a time where it was all about you had to be seen. I don’t want to call it old school but it was old school. If they don’t see you, you’re not working. I’m in-between that. I grew up in that old school and it was you need to be seen, you need to work a ton of hours, and you can take a vacation but you don’t take off for certain things. Meeting are priorities and you have to figure out how to make it work. If you have an important meeting and you have a sick child at home, figure out how to find daycare because you’re expected to be at that meeting.

I came up in that environment and much more conservative with respect to dress code and professional conduct and all of those things. I started to feel like I’m going to do the best that I can. I am going to work. I’m going to serve my clients. I’m going to be part of this team, but I’m not going to neglect my family. If it comes to a point where I need to make a choice, I know what that choice will be. I went about it that way. If I would hear the background noise and someone is saying, “There’s this perception that you’re not around as much as the other partners. They know that you have two young kids at home and you volunteer for the PTA.” That’s all fine.

I want to pause on that because this is a hard thing for women. A couple of things you said, I want go back to. One comment you made was about a lot of women are the primary caretakers and feel like they can’t continue on a leadership path. What were some changes you made in your life or conversations you had to make sure that you could do it and what would your advice be to other women as well when they feel that they might not have the support? Sometimes, it is perception versus speaking up.

A lot of it is perception. You have to find a support network somehow, somewhere. I don’t have a large family, so I didn’t have relatives living with us, helping with the kids all the time. My parents would help out as they could, a lot of good friends could be there as a backup. My advice is to have a backup plan. In case you can’t get to school or something comes up, and you have a child at home. Have a backup plan. The key is communication. A lot of it’s about communication and planning. Make it known, here’s my situation. I have to be at daycare to pick my kids up at 6:00. I will schedule meetings up until X time.

We didn’t do as many virtual meetings. It was mostly in-person and we did conference calls. There were numerous times I’d be doing a conference call from my car and I would let clients and teammates know at this time of day, I can do a conference call but I can’t be there in person. If it was a meeting that was critical that I be there in person, I made sure that I had a backup plan in case something went awry. That’s not to say things don’t go awry because they do because even the best-laid plans can change. Things come up and you have to be prepared to say, “This is life.”

I think that the whole point that you keep saying is you changed your mindset or belief system around a career of, “People are going to be upset, but I’m going to be okay with that.” There is the intention behind that in some way that you have to get yourself okay with hearing the noise and not letting it get to you. What practices did you do internally to not let it get you down? Not to say it might have not some days.

It did get me down sometimes. Communication and even sometimes, it was one-on-one. I’d find that I was hearing, “Someone was talking about the fact that you were out for a week because you had a sick kid or something,” that I would go to my supervisors, my superiors, and after I became partner, I would go to my partners. I would have conversations with them and say, “I’m engaged. I’m interested. I’m here. I am serving my clients.” If I’m with a sick kid during the day at home, I’m still emailing. I’m still checking in when I can. I’m working around it, getting the work done, and having satisfied clients. People can’t argue with a good result. Happy clients, you can’t argue with that.

They might be able to look at the hours that you worked, the days that you come into the office, or the days that you’re not in the office, but they can’t argue with the results. That was what I was pushing and communicating. I may not be able to be in the office at 7:00 AM, but I have this group of clients who I work with. They are very happy with me and I have a great reputation with them. I was good with the staff, with training, and with mentoring. I feel like it’s all in the actions. As we started developing more women in our profession, I started mentoring them.

When leaders start to hear that, it’s good to see that we have this partner and that partner who have young kids and who are making it work. They’re communicating to us and being honest with us that there are days that it’s very difficult. There are days that I feel guilty because I can’t be at my child’s recital or I had to reschedule that client meeting because I had an important doctor’s appointment to be at. There’s a level of feeling like you’re not always meeting the expectations. It’s more internal because you want to be able to do it all. I wanted to do it all. If I had to change something in my schedule or something came up at the last minute and I had to postpone or cancel, or I couldn’t show up at a school event, I would internalize it and feel like I failed.

You have to learn to let that go. You have to learn to realize that we’re all human, first of all. We all have a breaking point and we all need downtime. It’s okay to have other priorities outside of work. That’s the other thing. I just started feeling like it’s okay to say I have other priorities that my career is not the only thing I have going on. I do take vacations and unplug as best I can and spend time with my kids and go on a bike ride with them. I think it’s okay to say that out loud and you have to be prepared for. It’s gotten a lot better and the professions come a long way, but there might’ve been a little bit of that water cooler talk that, “Can you believe Jackie missed a meeting today because she was doing something else with her kids?” You have to be okay with that.

You have to learn to accept the fact that you can have it all if you want it. There is a way to figure it out, but there’s got to be some flexibility and some give. It’s okay not to do it all if that makes sense. You’re going to have times where you’re going to have to disappoint someone, reschedule, cancel, not be able to make it, and those things are going to happen. You have to learn to accept it and do the best you can to work around that as long as you realize that if you have to leave early to honor a family commitment. I made most of their elementary school parties. Valentine’s, Halloween, all that stuff, and there might’ve been one party that I missed. That’s okay because I did have to honor a work commitment. At that time, that was more of a priority and there’s a balance. You have to learn to accept that it’s a balancing act. Someone might be a little unhappy or disappointed on one side at this moment, but that is going to shift. It’s a constant shifting.

You can give some tips too, because a lot of times when these conversations come up for women, I feel like there’s a lot of defensiveness. When you’re saying I’m going to speak to the person that I heard was talking bad about me. It’s all in the approach to make sure that the conversation’s going to go well. How did you approach the conversation, plan for it or think it through, so it didn’t become emotional? When people are talking, it’s gossip. It’s not showing what you’re actually doing. This is how people’s personal brand gets ruined in organizations. I would say the second part to that question is how did you communicate the things you were accomplishing? A lot of women will feel like that’s bragging or being political, but if you don’t speak up and say what’s happening, then the brand of, “She just cares about her kids and she’s not delivering,” is going to overcome. How do you approach the conversation and make sure people know what you are doing without it sounding defensive?

The first word of advice is to have some mentors and advocates, at least one who’s going to advocate for you and have your back when there are discussions to talk about, as you said, gossip. Have someone who’s there to back you up and say, “That’s not fair just because this person is getting married, having children, staying at home to take care of an elderly parent or an ill family member. It doesn’t mean that they’re any less capable or passionate about their work.” When I would approach it, I would start with, “I understand that you feel like since I’m working part-time, when I was a manager, that I’m not as interested in being a leader of this firm. Here’s what I’ve done to prove that I am a team player and a leader of this firm. Explain to me what is bothering you about this.”

I’m asking and having the dialogue and saying, “What am I not doing? Help me understand what’s perpetuating this perception and what I can do to change it.” Some things are negotiable and some aren’t. If the conversation is, “All the partners are getting in at 7:00 AM. I have to drop a child off at school and their school starts at 8:00, which means I’ve got another half an hour plus commute to the office. I can’t be in there before 9:00 on these days that I have drop-off duty.” That is non-negotiable and you have to be willing in a very respectful way, stand your ground and stand for your position, and say, “I can’t meet this expectation to be in at 7:00 this day and I can’t travel.” We do a lot of traveling in our firm and I used to travel a lot, not so much anymore especially now. That’s another thing. It’s not women.

It’s young men and parents who say, “I can’t travel as much anymore because I have young children at home.” Some of them are afraid to speak up to say they don’t want to say no. They don’t want to disappoint a partner and say, “I can’t go to Africa for three weeks because I need to be home to help my wife with our newborn infant.” Again, it also does impact men but I still feel like women are the most reluctant to state their case and lay it out and say, “Here are the non-negotiables.” Here’s why the perception is incorrect. Here’s what I can do to try and change the perception. A lot of it honestly comes back to communication and showing individuals what you’re doing. If you’re not physically present, how are you present? Are you in contact with them? Are you holding regular meetings? Are you keeping them up to speed on what’s going on with a particular engagement?

All of that is important for people to understand and that it doesn’t sound defensive. This is my non-negotiable, but this is how I will serve your need on the other side. This is how I can maybe do something that it might not be the way that you’re used to, but it will be a way that we can still come to an agreement of what you’re trying to accomplish. Sometimes, when you’re asking those questions, it’s important to have them open-ended. It’s like, “What’s the outcome that you’re trying to get?” You had to come up with another path there that you’re not feeling bad about.

That’s exactly right and a lot of women, in particular, do feel like they’re being defensive. They are afraid that they will be looked at unfavorably and it may stall their careers. If they are honest and state their cases and say, “Here’s what I’m able to do. Here’s what I’m not able to do.” The profession is changing. I know our firm is changing. That’s one of the things that I would like to believe that I had a lot to do with because that was my philosophy I’ve put into practice from day one. It was, I may not be in the office every day. I may leave early to go to a school function, but here’s what I’m doing, keeping on top of the clients, keeping in touch with staff, communicating what’s going on, and showing my young parents that it’s okay. There’s a balance.

It’s the actions from the top if you want to truly have these policies in the firm where people believe it because they see the leaders doing it. With your path to partner, how long was it before you became the managing partner of the firm? You haven’t been there so long and gone through what you went through. What belief systems did you want to change there being the leader?

It wasn’t a very long runway from when I became partner to when I became managing partner. I was admitted effective January 1st of 2010, and I became managing partner on July 1st, 2013. It was a pretty short runway. I was a principal. That’s another position that we have during 2009. That was the stepping stone to being partner. I was still relatively new as a partner when I accepted that role. Your belief system, you have to believe in you. You have to believe that you deserve the role, that you are perfectly capable, you’re in this position and there’s a reason why, and you deserve it.

A lot of times, that’s not always the case. I didn’t always feel that way and I’m not sure what the psychology is behind that, but there were times in my college years and early on in my career that I felt like, “I don’t have what it takes to get to that next level. I don’t have what it takes to be a partner. I want to be but maybe I’m not as capable as this person or that person.” Part of it is comparing yourself to peers. It’s what you see in here in social media and in the media in general. When you see things in the profession and you go to conferences. The first managing partner conference I went to, there were very few women there.

That is a little intimidating and discouraging initially, but you have to learn to take that and not let it bother you or change your actions or beliefs and just say I believe in myself. I believe that I’m qualified to be here. I believe that I’m perfectly capable, if not more capable than some of the others. I’m going to take this as momentum to change a profession. That’s the way I saw it. I saw it as, “Wow.” Initially, I was like, “What am I up against here?” There are not that many women partners in general. There are more now but in general, there’s still a lot of firms that are male-dominated. What can I do about it myself? I believe that the profession is changing. I believe in myself. I believe there’s a lot of talented women out there. What can I do to help change the profession?

What impacts have you seen in the firm with some of this whole work-life change as far as culture, retention, client happiness, or whatever tracking you can do on that?

I’ve seen young people that are developing in their careers. They’re flourishing. We are promoting more women into leadership. We have more young and newer individuals who we’re giving more opportunities too. To me, it’s about interesting and enabling. When you have a good candidate, quite frankly, it doesn’t matter what gender, race, religion, or whatever. If there’s talent, you nurture that talent and you do what you can to help them develop their strengths and grow, rather than boxing them in and putting them in a box and saying, “Here’s what the typical partner looks like. It’s 60 hours a week.” You can’t tell anybody you have young kids at home, that kind of thing. You don’t put people in a box. You let them exist in their situation, take their strengths, and capitalize on those strengths.

We’ve got women who are partners now who’ve been with the firm. They’ve seen me come up through the ranks and raise my children, and they’ve seen what I’ve gone through. I’d like to think that I’m setting a good example and people know that it’s okay to have other priorities. It’s good to have balance. I like to set an example of balance. We offer a very flexible work arrangement. We did even before COVID and we’re fully anticipating that’s going to continue beyond the pandemic. I feel like you need to trust and invest in your young leadership. Invest in them, keep an open communication, and lead by example. Show them that it’s okay to take a vacation. When I’m on vacation, you might send me an email and you might hear from me later this evening or tomorrow, and that’s okay.

I wanted to do some quick-fire questions that we end the show with. Pick a category, family and friends, money, spiritual, or health.

Let’s do health.

Things or actions that I don’t have that I want with my health.

This is going to sound cliché, but I hit a milestone a few years ago and I would love it if I could be the healthiest and in the best shape that I’ve ever been in my life. I would love to get there.

Things or actions that I do have that I want.

I have a regular workout routine, big believer in working out, exercising, yoga, running, whatever it is that gets you fired up, and that also serves as your stress relief. I’m a big believer in that and you do need to carve out time for it. I do have that and I want to keep doing that.

Things or actions that I don’t have that I don’t want.

Excuses. I don’t want excuses. We can all make excuses for not getting up and working out in the morning or feeling blah if I haven’t worked out in three weeks. I don’t want to make excuses and when I find myself making excuses, I try to stop and I just think to myself, “It’s an excuse. I can do better than this.”

Things or actions that I do have that I don’t want.

Stress. I would love to have less stress. I know that’s not possible, so maybe I should say the anxiety that goes with the stress. I’d like to try and keep that at bay.

We’ve been doing a whole mindfulness series with your team there on that, so that’s been great. To end our conversation, is there anything that you want to leave people with that we didn’t cover or something that you wanted to talk about that we didn’t talk about?

I’m going to leave you with a quote. One of my favorite quotes ever, and people have heard me say this over and over again, is from Condoleezza Rice, “I wish that someone had told me that my sense of unease about whether I really belonged was shared by everyone in the room, including my male colleagues, but they hid it better.” I have it on my wall in my office that I haven’t been to very much these past years. I like that. Everyone has, at some point in your life, a sense of unease about whether you belong, you’re right, capable enough, or good enough for the position that you’re in or the situation that you’re in, and you have to believe in yourself.

Thank you so much for sharing your story and there are lots of great takeaways for people to leave with. Thanks for being on.

Thank you, Amy. It was my pleasure. Take care.

-—

For my Mindful Moments of this interview that I had with Jackie Cardello, it was such a great story of the plate of women in their careers and the struggle that so many of us have with wanting to achieve while having this pool on our heart the times that we aren't home as well. It was important to talk about this and her journey. I appreciate how honest she was about the struggles that she had because no matter how far we get with this topic in the profession and many of our careers, so many of us still struggle with this. It may be a perceived struggle and a real struggle, but it's obviously and honestly an internal struggle that each of us go through. When we don't see it on people's faces, we assume that it's not going on, but everybody walks with these stories inside of them.

It's important that we are asking people what they need during their careers to help them break through these barriers, which Jackie has dedicated much of her career to. It’s helping others because she had people that helped her and she wants to keep opening that up for more people to break through their perceived barriers, whatever that may be, in order to achieve the success that they want. We talked a lot about her father being a CPA when she was younger. She thought that was a boring career by watching what he was doing, but saw that she wanted to go to law school. She was good at Math and English, but it was her father that stepped her back while she was in college to talk about what was important as far as a long-term career and security.

It's important when we have these discussions. It’s making sure that it aligns with the things that we love. She realized she didn't love Science. When she thought about going into business, she was good at Math. She took an Accounting class, saw that it was something that was of interest to her, and she enjoyed it. What's important is we don't isolate feedback, say something safe, and that's the path we should go. It's that maybe it's a safe path, but do we love doing the work as well and make sure that we've got both of those things aligned so that we can be driven in the careers that we have. We're not pushing against something that goes against our grain, which was an important thing in her journey.

As she started her career, she was very focused on becoming a partner. She brought up a few mentors that were critical in empowering her to be able to achieve what she needed to achieve as she was bringing up young children. That can be such an important thing. To have those people around you so that you feel it's okay to have those moments of weakness when you're feeling that you're working too much. You need to talk to someone about it, have that mentor to talk about, and solve for those issues so that you do feel like you're not missing out on everything. Now, the one thing is about balancing your career and trying to achieve. You're not going to be perfect at everything. The important thing she talks about was you can pull and stretch yourself out so that you are not being great in any one area.

Those are the moments when we need to step back, pause, and assess the things that are most important for us to focus on. If there are certain things that are not in alignment with that or we're waiting things to be more important than they are, that observation to create that shift or pivot in our life so that we do spend the time on the things that we have decided that are most important from a priority’s situation. It was when she became a manager as a young mother. She realized that there was more to life than work. It opened her eyes to this crossroads that she had of, “How do I balance both?” It shifted her focus. We all have those moments in our lives and our careers where we start noticing that we're different.

That may be the things that we thought were so important aren't as important as we thought. We need to shift priorities and decide what we're willing to sacrifice. During that time of conflict in her life, she definitely felt that she was willing to sacrifice some of her goals in her career so that could prioritize being a mom the way that she wanted to do that. We addressed the problems with the perception of women that are trying to balance career, achievement, and raising children at the same time. There's a certain perception that people are going to have that you cannot control, but it is how we go about it and how we communicate so that we're not allowing that perception of just take over and be mad about the perception.

We talked about how important it was for her to be talking to her leaders about why she might be late to a meeting or when she's going to work different hours because of things that the kids have but never putting a client on the back burner or not placing the importance of a client relationship, and making sure that the people around her knew that the clients were happy. A lot of times, we don't speak up for ourselves because we might think that's political or uncomfortable, and so forth. It's important that if you don't want a certain perception of yourself, you find ways to do it in positive ways to surface up the things that people need to hear and know about your daily life because what you know about everything you do on a daily basis, no one else knows. No one is paying attention.

They're paying attention to the things that they’re doing every day. We talked about that in order to get the perception to change. It was important to communicate coming in late or early, depending on what kids needed. It was important to the people around you that you discuss why they aren't seeing you at certain times. It's not that it's not important to you. It's that you've got other commitments, but you figure out how to make it work. You can collaborate with your leader, your manager, or your partner, whoever that is on, how do we still come to the middle of what they want of what you want so that everyone can be happy. At the end of the day, we might think or have this perception or belief that a boss or a manager doesn't care or they would never be flexible to have that kind of discussion.

If we don't bring the discussion up, we'll never know. Sometimes, we can create our own barrier to having that discussion, which is so important. Finding a support network was another thing that we talked about that so important, not only having a network at work, but a support network at home, of who you can call upon, carpool with, and how you're going to get things done. Also, talking to your partner, if you have a partner on how you're going to help each other and what you have going on each day. That communication and planning is key to making sure that you will feel successful in what you're doing. We also talked about transparency and not feeling guilty. You're not going to meet everybody's expectations. Sometimes, we can internalize those feelings like we have failed, but many times, this is our internalization of that.

We're blaming the outside world when we ask or have that transparent conversation with other people. We often find out it's not what other people were thinking. If you want to have it all, it's okay not to do everything for everyone. You will not disappoint people as long as you communicate how you're going to achieve what each of you want but also when you're not feeling you're doing everything that you need to do. Making sure that you're open to conversations where other people can help you not only achieve what you need but achieve what they need rather than avoiding it. Making sure you understand how to negotiate those conversations in a positive way rather than coming on too strong and don't want to offend someone but instead find a way to show that person that you appreciate the work they do as well and their perception of the world. When you understand their perception better, you can come to a better conclusion.

Important Links:

• GRF CPAs

• CPAmerica

• Tree House Child Assessment Center of Montgomery County

• Girls On the Run of Montgomery County

• John Langan - LinkedIn

• Michael Freedman - LinkedIn

• Linkedin.com/in/jackie-cardello-grf

About Jackie Cardello

Jackie Cardello, CPA is President and Managing Partner of GRF CPAs & Advisors, a leading CPA firm with international reach headquartered in metropolitan Washington, DC. While providing leadership and guidance for the firm, Ms. Cardello focuses on strategies that elevate GRF as a premier provider of accounting, assurance, tax and advisory services to nonprofit organizations, small businesses and individuals. She also spearheads initiatives that focus on recruiting and mentoring young CPAs as well as programs that promote diversity, equity and inclusion.

An auditor by trade, Ms. Cardello provides guidance to nonprofit organizations including 501(c)(3) charitable entities, associations, private voluntary organizations and various arts, advocacy, community development and other charitable institutions. She also leads the firm’s employee benefit plan audit practice, managing and providing expertise for audits of 401(k), 403(b), pension and health and welfare plans.

Ms. Cardello is a board member of CPAmerica, a national association of CPA firms in the United States. With a passion for animals and children, she has served in various capacities for organizations such as Tree House Child Assessment Center of Montgomery County and Girls on the Run of Montgomery County. Ms. Cardello is a graduate of the University of Maryland College Park and a member of AICPA, MACPA, GWSCPA and the National Association of Professional Women. She was recognized by the Greater Washington Society of CPAs with their Women to Watch Award, Emerging Leader category in 2013.

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