Massachusetts Society of CPAs CEO aims to build accounting pipeline

Zach Donah, the new CEO of the Massachusetts Society of CPAs, is only three months into the job, but he has big plans for the organization, especially when it comes to bringing fresh talent into the profession.

Donah is only 35 years old, but he has worked at MassCPAs for 10 years. He was formerly deputy CEO and vice president of advocacy before he was tapped last year to succeed longtime CEO Amy Pitter as president and CEO. Before joining MassCPAs in 2013, he was commissioner at the Massachusetts Department of Revenue.

“I’ve had some experience in this association representing the profession,” said Donah. “I’ve spent a bit of time on our senior leadership team, so I have some familiarity with how we’ve gotten to where we are and where we want to go.”

The top priority for members is the need for talent. “One thing that we’re really focused on at MassCPAs is thinking about the current talent shortage as part of a broader workforce development challenge within the profession,” said Donah. “There are obviously the pipeline issues and not enough students going into accounting degree programs, but there also aren’t enough seasoned professionals to go around.”

Other challenges that are often cited by MassCPAs members is keeping up with skills, reskilling current staff, and upskilling nontraditional accounting professionals. 

“Like other organizations we’re really trying to attack the workforce challenge from a bunch of different perspectives,” said Donah. “One of those is around advocacy on behalf of the profession. We’re leveraging both state and federal workforce development funds to address some of the profession’s challenges around talent and workforce.”

He noted that in Massachusetts, approximately $2.5 billion has been allocated for workforce development. “We leverage some of that through workforce training,” said Donah. “There’s a Workforce Training Fund here in Massachusetts that helps firms and other organizations train and upskill their teams. But that’s about a $25 million program, so we’re just really scratching the surface of getting the profession more access to different workforce development grants and funding opportunities to really improve the current state.”

MassCPAs has been working with some of the prominent universities and colleges in Massachusetts. 

“We’ve got an academic and career development team,” said Donah. “We’ve got two members on that team that focus a lot on student and educator engagement, and the ecosystem around the students: parents, guidance counselors, educators, administrators. There’s a lot of programming around finding the right pathway for college students and leveraging their university network for that.”

Outreach is important to attract even younger students who are still in high school and trying to decide on a career. “We really focus a lot on high schools,” said Donah. “The way that we think about addressing our pipeline is through inspiration, support and then continuation of the profession. Think about just the inspiration bucket. A lot of the high school work that we do is just trying to counter the erosion of accounting-based coursework and basically general business courses in public high schools that we’ve seen over probably decades now, especially with such a focus on STEM education. That’s particularly true here in Massachusetts, where there are fewer and fewer high schools offering these types of courses. We do a bunch of work in the actual high schools, connecting our members with the students to really get exposure to the profession and just that general understanding of the career opportunities that would come with the accounting profession.”

MassCPAs partners with two community colleges — Bristol Community College and Middlesex Community College — to create dual enrollment programs, also known in Massachusetts as “innovation pathways.”

Those efforts help bring accounting courses back into public high schools and give students college credit to address some of the cost barriers associated with pursuing the CPA credential.

MassCPAs is building on its diversity, equity and inclusion efforts, despite the backlash against DEI programs in the wake of last year’s Supreme Court ruling against Harvard and the University of North Carolina that has prompted some companies to scale back their diversity initiatives.

“We’ve had a demonstrated program for diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging for a number of years,” said Donah. “We’ve really focused around training for our members: general awareness training and also training for their entire organization. Our learning and development team has a robust in-house training program that they bring into firms to help them address some of these cultural challenges in a lot of organizations. What we have found is that the accounting profession lags behind other similarly situated professions.”

MassCPAs is in the process of finalizing a research paper on the subject now, and Donah pointed to research studies on DEI from the Institute of Management Accountants as well as Accounting Today and Arizent Research. The Accounting Today and Arizent Research study found almost a fifth of respondents (24%) are indifferent to DEI, and almost a third (30%) think it’s somewhere between “somewhat unimportant” and “completely unimportant.”

“From our perspective, there’s a moral responsibility and obligation,” said Donah. “There’s also a real leadership obligation and opportunity, especially when we think about the workforce development challenges that the profession has. It’s not my concept. It’s widely documented. The equity, inclusion and belonging piece of driving diversity is what we’re really trying to get across to members and help position them so that not only are they able to recruit and retain diverse talent, but they’re able to recruit and retain all talent. That’s certainly a big focus of ours going forward.”

He pointed to companies that have laid off their DEI staff, and why MassCPAs is continuing to promote diversity. “In the face of the backlash, it’s almost more important that folks double down on this work and really show the commitment to their teams that they’re serious about it because the data — whether it’s the Institute of Management Accountants or other folks that have done data in this area — really shows the connection between a demonstrated commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion, and retention of employees, and that’s true across all employee segments,” said Donah. “Especially when you look at the next generation and the data on Gen Z and millennials — from a consumer behavior standpoint and an employee standpoint — it’s not even a question for a lot of these folks anymore who they want to work for, who they want to buy products from. I think that’s true for clients too. Clients want to work with organizations that represent the communities that they’re serving.”

Similarly, he expects firms to continue to do work in the environmental, social and governance space despite the backlash against ESG in recent years given the amount of investment they’ve made and how ingrained sustainability is now for many organizations. “It doesn’t make business sense to roll back, even in the face of some of these challenges,” said Donah.

He plans to advance the use of technology at MassCPAs and its members. “There’s a lot of information about technology out there, but less resources for helping public accounting firms and organizations figure out what products and services are right for them,” said Donah. “We haven’t quite figured out how to play in that space, but I think it would be of enormous benefit to our members to have well-vetted products to explore to help them make the decision and to really have resource professionals to help them implement it. We’re thinking about that now. We’re hoping to have something ready to roll out to really help folks.”

He also hopes to increase MassCPAs’ advocacy work. “State societies and all organizations that work with accounting professionals have a pretty unique vantage point,” said Donah. “Accountants themselves and CPAs have a really unique vantage point on public policy’s impacts on behavior. They’re right on the front lines, trusted advisors to individuals and businesses across the world, in Massachusetts and elsewhere. We’re really trying to leverage that knowledge and firsthand perspective to help inform legislative and regulatory leaders on the decisions that they’re making. That’s certainly true in the tax space, but expanding that out to general business issues will be a benefit both to our membership and to the economy as a whole here in Massachusetts.”