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Cool Careers in Accounting Ep. 34 - Turning Experience into Expertise: A Story of Learning and Reinvention with Heather Esposito
102 Plays20 hours ago
Heather Esposito’s career path is anything but linear: from special education to earning six Mary Kay career cars (including the Pink Cadillac), rebuilding after Hurricane Katrina, and rising into leadership development at major companies—before returning to accounting, earning her CPA later in life, and launching two businesses. In this interview, she shares how curiosity, resilience, and lifelong learning shaped every pivot, plus what she believes is changing fast in the accounting profession. Listen for practical insights on reinvention, leadership, and skills-based growth.
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Transcript
Introduction of Heather Esposito
00:00:09
Speaker
hey everybody, it is Mike Potenza, and we are back for another episode in Becker Accounting Podcasts. And I always tell you we have really interesting guests and they do a lot of great things in accounting. But this guest is really different. When you hear the arc of her professional trajectory and how she wound up in accounting and what she did before and what she's currently doing now, you're going to say oh my goodness, I could have never envisioned that for someone. So I think you're really going to enjoy this story.
Heather's Early Life and College Experience
00:00:38
Speaker
And with that, I'm going to welcome Heather Esposito to our podcast. Heather, thank you so much for being here today.
00:00:45
Speaker
Thank you so much. All right, Heather, I have so much i want to talk to you about. When you and I had a little conversation and you were giving me a little background into your career, I was really, really impressed and blown away. But before we just dive right into it, maybe give the audience a little bit of a background on Heather and tell me, you know, what part of the country did you grow up in?
00:01:08
Speaker
I grew up in Memphis, Tennessee, and then lived all over the South. So I'm a Southern girl. I do not hear any Memphis accent. Where did it go? Well, I think that happened pretty early when I moved away from Memphis when I was 12. And when I moved, I moved to Boca Raton, Florida, which if you know anything about that area, tends to be a lot of Northeasterners who moved down there.
00:01:32
Speaker
And when you're 12 and you say things like pat and i like, and people make fun of you at that age, you learn to cut it out pretty quick. So I was able to, i think, work around that accent fairly, fairly early. I'm surprised if you moved to Boca that you don't have the same accent that I have being from New York. There could be. That could have happened.
00:01:53
Speaker
All right. So you grow up ah for, you know, young age in Memphis and you go to Florida. Now you're getting ready to go to school. Did you stay in that Florida area when you went to college?
00:02:05
Speaker
I didn't. I actually moved to New Orleans. I was offered a very lucrative scholarship. I was very blessed that I performed well academically. And it at the time, I was living in Tallahassee when I graduated from high school. So New Orleans was close enough to be away and also close enough that if I wanted to go home on a weekend, I could do that without too much trouble.
00:02:29
Speaker
The Big Easy, NOLA.
Transition to Special Education and Mary Kay Career
00:02:31
Speaker
The Big Easy. I love that city. I'm surprised that you left there. Well, first, up where'd you go to school in ah New Orleans? I went to the University of New Orleans, which isn't a fairly well-known school, but they had an awesome business program. And that's one of the things that drew me there in addition to the scholarship.
00:02:48
Speaker
So is that what you majored in, business or accounting, or what was your actual major? Yeah, I started in accounting and I ended up switching that to business administration with a minor in accounting so that I could leverage my scholarship to the maximum capacity. So a a little bit of both, business and accounting. Listen, in today's day and age, every dollar helps because we know how expensive these educations are. So, well, that's great to hear. So then you graduate and
00:03:20
Speaker
You stay for a master's, did you say, or did you go right into the workforce at that point? No, i I went on and continued my education. And that was one of the reasons why I moved from a major in accounting to business administration was I had enough credits at the end of my junior year tip finish a bachelor's. And they let me go take a year of credits towards my master's on that scholarship. So that's how I ended up doing my master's right out of that program. Oh, excellent. Okay. So you graduate, you have your bachelor's, you have your master's, and then what happens at that point? Is that where you say, you know what?
00:03:56
Speaker
I'm going to be an accountant. That's what I want to do. And you jump right into accounting. ah That would have been an easy way for this story to end. And this podcast would not be as interesting if that's the direction I took. ah My master's was in special education. And the reason I chose that was while I was in school, my part-time job was working in an after-school program.
00:04:18
Speaker
And I learned that I really loved working with kids and education. So I've did my master's in special education and took a hard left out of business at that point and then got a job in the public school system. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. That is what I find interesting. Accounting, business administration. So how far along in the process you say, you know what, I'm going to go into special education? Was it like a couple of years before you graduated? Was it the month of graduation? When do you change this mindset?
00:04:48
Speaker
Well, what i what I learned was that ah I was able to convince the school system to give me a job that required you to have an undergraduate degree. And even though I didn't formally walk, I could produce a transcript that shows I had met all the requirements, explained to them that I wasn't walking so that I could keep my scholarship.
00:05:09
Speaker
And when I entered the school system, the only jobs that had openings were in special education. And so I figured I would do six months or so in special education, and then I'd have enough seniority that hopefully I could get back into regular education.
00:05:27
Speaker
And because I was in special education, I decided to do my master's there. And then I didn't leave. I fell in love with working with children with disabilities and stayed there for the complete time I was in education.
00:05:39
Speaker
Well, listen, that is very commendable. And special education is such a noble profession to you know work with these children that need all of this extra you know attention and to be a person who could provide that attention. Not many people could do that. It takes a special person to do that. So you know thank you for all that time you did put in there. And just on that note, how long did you stay in there? And why did you not make it a career for the rest of the duration of your employment?
00:06:10
Speaker
Yeah, I stayed there. So thank you for that. it It was something that taught me so much, but I spent about four or five years there. And the reason I didn't make it my full my full career was that I was single at the time. And you know it doesn't doesn't really make pay the bills or it doesn't allow you to save up. And so I needed to do something else to supplement my income. And that was
Educational Background and Direct Sales
00:06:36
Speaker
the opening to the next chapter of my life.
00:06:38
Speaker
And there are a lot of chapters, that's for sure. So nobody go anywhere because you're going want to hear all these different chapters. All right. So we closed a chapter on business administration and accounting, opened it up on special education. You're there for a number of years, but then you say, I'm not making enough money. I need to do something else. So when you turn the page, and you go to the next chapter in the book. Where does that bring you?
00:07:04
Speaker
Well, there was some overlap. So I i started a direct sales business ah selling cosmetics with Mary Kay. And I was really doing that just as part time income. I was always somebody who took good care of my skin. i loved cosmetics. And so it seemed like a natural fit. It was something I could work around my teaching career.
00:07:27
Speaker
And I think that brought back the business administration piece, because when you're an independent contractor, you're really running your own business. So all the things I learned in business school came back to be of value, as well as The things I was learning in education, I always approach sales from a let me teach you about your skin. Let me teach you how to do this. And so I found that all of these past experiences helped me be successful in that next chapter.
00:07:58
Speaker
And I ended up making more money part time with Mary Kay and Yes, people are going to want to know, did you earn a career car? i earned six career cars with Mary Kay, including the pink Cadillac, which was just the coolest thing ever. And i left education to pursue that full time.
00:08:16
Speaker
Wow. Six cars. That is absolutely amazing. You must have have been pretty good at these selling the cosmetics and everything. So can you do me a favor after the podcast is over? Could you hang on? Because look at what I'm dealing with here. If you have some inside tips you can share, we we could talk about that after this podcast. Okay.
00:08:37
Speaker
Perfect. Perfect. All right. Wow. Six cars is a lot. What did you do with them? Did you keep them? Did you sell them? What do you do? Well, you you earn it for two years and they always want you to be driving a new one. So as long as you continue to meet those qualifications, you turn the old one in and they send you a new one. So I didn't own them all or I didn't drive them all at the same time. They were consecutive. And I was I was successful in that chapter of my career. And I never thought of myself as a salesperson.
00:09:06
Speaker
But I think the fact that I just wanted to help and teach people was one of the differentiators that made it not feel like sales, but... just made it feel like I was helping people. Well, I can see how you know the degrees in business accounting really come into play because direct sales,
Pursuing Accounting and Law
00:09:24
Speaker
really, like you said, you're running your own business. so it's very important to have that understanding. And then to have the teaching and the education dealing with special ed, you learn a lot of, um you know I would assume interpersonal skills that you probably leveraged very well to sell all of this. So it sounds like you're kind of using a little bit from all of these different learning processes that you had.
00:09:46
Speaker
I did. And i think one of the other things that particularly sticks out to me about my time in Mary Kay is that when you lead a sales unit, you're working with people who are also independent contractors. They are not your employees. You can't tell them what to do.
00:10:03
Speaker
And through that chapter, i learned the importance of you know creating a vision that people wanted to be part of, ah helping to inspire and motivate people.
00:10:15
Speaker
And the crossover for me from special education and the thing I really take from that chapter is i learned to find Just what was amazing about someone to be able to work with a child with disabilities. And you can look at so many things on the outside that feel like they might be hard to overcome, but you get to know who they are on the inside and be able to pull that out.
00:10:44
Speaker
That's something that I think has shaped everything I've done since then. And just the belief I have in people wanting people to unlock their full potential, whether it was a child with a disability or a mom who was trying to make extra money or a teacher that was trying to make extra money. that's That's really what I loved about that chapter was seeing people grow and accomplish things that they might never have thought were possible for them. Wow, that that is great. And I'm sure you changed many lives in a very positive way. i hope so.
00:11:17
Speaker
So it sounds like everything is going well at Mary Kay. You know, you keep hitting these marks. So why don't you just kind of ride that career out? Well, again, life life had a different idea for me. And there were a couple of things that happened. The first was I went through a divorce.
00:11:36
Speaker
And I started thinking to myself, I'm a single mom now. Maybe I need to rethink my career choices maybe i need to have something that i feel would be more stable or more professional so this is where accounting pops back up again i went back to school because i realized i had six hours left to get my bachelor's in accounting so i did that and i thought that i was going to be a tax attorney of all things so i applied to law school this was how i was going to reinvent myself get my cpa license go to law school And become a tax attorney.
Career Shift Due to Hurricane Katrina
00:12:14
Speaker
And then that wasn't exactly what life had in mind for me either. But i that was the the trajectory I was on. I was getting ready to start law school in the summer of 2005. So you're still working in Mary Kay. You apply to law school. You're going to start law school. Then what happened? Who pulled the rug out from underneath you?
00:12:35
Speaker
ah Well, her name was Katrina. And as you heard, i lived in New Orleans. And so there was a big event that uprooted that whole community in August of 2005. And so that was that there was no law school to attend in the summer of 2005. And I ended up evacuated to Atlanta for a and and Again, another chapter because I needed to figure out how I was going to support my family at the time I was remarried by that point. But we were a young family with a newborn and I needed i needed a new plan.
00:13:15
Speaker
So you. Before Katrina hits, you're at Mary Kay. You're going to go to law school, I assume, maybe at night while you're working at Mary Kay. But then we get this massive hurricane Katrina that you know basically devastates New Orleans. You go to Atlanta, but you're there for a year. But why can't you just go back to Mary Kay? What happened? Yeah.
00:13:38
Speaker
I could have. That was definitely an option. All my customers were spread out who knows where. And if you remember about 2005, we didn't have, i mean cell phone usage was still fairly expensive.
00:13:51
Speaker
ah People were just beginning to learn how to text. And that's when you had to text with the triple tap to get the the words to spell out. it was It was not simple to find and stay in touch with people. The internet was still young in its infancy and ah you know i had the opportunity to rebuild it but i knew what it had taken it was it was a big effort to to earn six company cars with mary kay and to build a business that could support you full-time
00:14:23
Speaker
And, you know, it felt like one of those got the T-shirt. I've already done that. And i wasn't sure that I wanted to do all of that again because it was hard. Not that I'm, as you know, i don't mind working hard, but man, I didn't know if I wanted to repeat that all again. I had
Commercial Furniture Sales Experience
00:14:41
Speaker
already done that. It felt like I had already accomplished what I was supposed to get out of that chapter.
00:14:45
Speaker
Yeah, there's a lot of people, regardless of what their job is, when they look back at their careers in hindsight, they what they say to themselves, oh my goodness, if i you knew then what I had to endure, I never would have gone down this path. So I get it. You've been there, you've done that. Now you want a fresh start. So, I mean, you know you have your background in education, you have your background in sales, you have your business degree. So where did you go next?
00:15:12
Speaker
Yeah. So we had a mutual friend in Atlanta who had just started his own company in the commercial wall covering space, and he needed some sales support and I needed some human interaction. i was a mom of three young children and I just needed something to do to keep but Literally from going insane. You know, we weren't sure what was happening when we'd be able to return to New Orleans. So I started doing sales support for him brought my baby in ah her carrier, sat on his floor, helped him do that.
00:15:47
Speaker
And he quickly realized I was overqualified for the job. But I enjoyed just having something that was just for me during a time where so much felt out of control.
00:15:58
Speaker
And through that, when I decided, well, not really when I decided, when we were ready to move back to New Orleans, he had a friend in the commercial furniture business that was looking for a rep.
00:16:10
Speaker
And so they were able to put together kind of a package for me and ask me if I would handle sales for them in the New Orleans area. And I said, I don't know anything about calling on architects and designers. I don't know anything about furniture or wall covering.
00:16:27
Speaker
And they said, we can teach you that. you can You can learn. And so that's what I came back to New Orleans to do was
Role in Learning and Development at Herman Miller
00:16:34
Speaker
work. to rep furniture and wall covering for them as we work to rebuild our lives in new orleans so you're still selling again you're just not selling cosmetics you're like you know i'm gonna now sell furniture instead and you're selling to whom people in their houses big cup corporations who you're selling to No, this was a B2B sale. So I was working with ah organizations who were either building buildings or moving into spaces using, you know, doing their whole floor plate. So the offices you work in, the desks you sit at, the chairs you sit at, that was the that was the business that I was in.
00:17:09
Speaker
So was this company that you went to go work for to do this B2B furniture sales, it big company, small mom and pop shop, what type of company? Well, originally it was what they call a small independent rep group, a group that represents a number of small lines and you call on architects and designers and end users. But very quickly, one of the dealers that I called on worked for a major manufacturer called Technion.
00:17:34
Speaker
And they asked me to come work for them. I worked for them for about five years building that territory. And then a much larger player, Herman Miller, asked me to come work for them.
00:17:46
Speaker
And ah again, in a sales position, but that sales position didn't last very long. ah Where'd you go from the sales position then? Yeah. you know So there's a there's just pieces of you that never die. And that education piece, ah I was just that person that if I found something that worked, and during that time, i was a master at using LinkedIn to build my network.
00:18:09
Speaker
And I was the person that said, let me tell my peers, I want to share with them what I've learned, how I'm using this tool. And it became really apparent to those in inside Herman Miller that I probably had some opportunities to use that skill set in what we called our sales enablement team or our sales readiness team.
00:18:31
Speaker
And that was the learning and development team that supported the sales organization.
Career Opportunities Post-Merger at Herman Miller
00:18:35
Speaker
And there was an opening there and they asked me if I would consider taking my sales background and experience to use that to support other sales professionals in learning how to be effective in their roles.
00:18:49
Speaker
Okay. so the sales is going well, but you have a lot of these ideas and how to maybe train people. So they move you into a learning development position. Now, yeah how long are you at the company at this point? And how long do you stay with them?
00:19:03
Speaker
So at that point, I had probably been with Herman Miller two years, and I had been in kind of the furniture profession for about six at that time. And I stayed full ah for 10 years at Herman Miller, eight in different roles in the learning and development space. And I think that was the chapter that really opened my eyes to where I was supposed to be and where I could really make an impact and have value.
00:19:31
Speaker
Okay. Now, to me, this is where it gets interesting. So before I close that page on this chapter, we move on to the next chapter. Give give me, give the audience an idea.
00:19:43
Speaker
How long are you now out of school and working? How many years into your career are you at this point? Let's see. ah That would have been almost 25 years.
00:19:54
Speaker
Okay. out of Out of school. Well, and then, if but if you count when I went back, we're now um probably about 10. 10 from the time I went back and got my bachelor's in business in accounting. Right. But you did have like prior 10 years work experience there as well.
00:20:10
Speaker
Exactly. Got it. Got it. So, I mean, you're not a rookie anymore. You're what I'm going to call a seasoned veteran, maybe not working in finance or accounting, but in working, dealing with people. Now you're raising a family. you know, money is obviously important as well. you have to a lot of bills that we need to pay. So you're at Herman Miller, 10 years, things are going well, learning and development.
00:20:32
Speaker
What happens next? Well, a couple of things. So we're in the middle of the pandemic by this point. And Herman Miller had gone through a very strategic merger and acquisition with one of the other big players in the space. So this was a a merger of a 10,000 person organization and like about a seven or 8,000. So I'm sorry, about 3,000. So we were growing into a much larger company and they redesigned the company from the C-suite down.
00:21:05
Speaker
And, ah you know, again, anytime that anybody who's listening to this has gone through a merger, it it doesn't mean that what is created is not good, but it's often not the company you joined. And I really loved what Herman Miller was before that time.
00:21:24
Speaker
And it was becoming a different kind of company. And again, not that that's a bad thing, but it gave me pause to say, maybe this is a sign that it's time for me to look for something different.
00:21:35
Speaker
And 2021, the job market was very hot. And I said, oh, if this is the time to look, it would be now.
Joining BPM and CPA Pursuit
00:21:43
Speaker
And I saw a job posting at an accounting firm that described themselves as very human centric. And I said, well, that's interesting to me. That's not the first word that I come up, that it comes up for me when I think of accounting firms and my work is very human centric. And so It was a director of learning and development position with the chance to build a whole function from the ground up.
00:22:08
Speaker
I said, wow, that would be an interesting challenge and give me exposure to parts of learning and development that I had not owned, obviously, in an organization of 10, 11, 12,000 people.
00:22:20
Speaker
Your team is very stratified. So I was responsible for leadership development globally across the world, and across a family of 19 brands. There were other people that owned other aspects of learning and development. So I thought it would be it would be neat to build that from the ground up.
00:22:39
Speaker
Applied for that role and moved to BPM in early 2022 and found myself back in the accounting space, which felt like a whole full circle moment for me at that time.
00:22:50
Speaker
So this is a job that you're trying to land at a very large public accounting firm. Now, granted, it's on I understand the learning and development side, but still, you haven't really worked in the accounting industry before. So how does that interview even go when they look at your resume and they ask about your background and now you want to work and learning development in a public accounting firm. Did it make a lot of sense for them? Was it an easy interview or was it you know pretty challenging to explain your background and why you would fit well in this role?
00:23:23
Speaker
I don't think so. What I've noticed over the last five 10 years or so, is especially in the last five, is that many accounting firms have gone out to recruit learning and development directors from outside the profession. And I think that's because we knew that maybe some of the things that we had been doing prior to that, while it served us in some ways,
00:23:48
Speaker
It was not giving us exposure to what else is happening out there in corporate America and what other industries and professions are doing. And there are a number of us who have moved had moved from larger companies into an accounting firm.
00:24:05
Speaker
And so I think it was just something that the profession was noticing that they needed they needed a different skill set and it was likely going to come from outside the profession. So before we dive into this role at BPM,
00:24:18
Speaker
Did you ever get your CPA and were you a CPA at this point when you interviewed? So no, I was not a CPA at this point. I had a CPA background, of course, or I had an accounting background, which i did think I do think that helped me in my interview process that I had some exposure to the work.
00:24:36
Speaker
But interestingly enough, I used my time at BPM to get my CPA license. So I just did that in the last couple of years. Okay. So that's really interesting. So you got the CPA later in life. Now, ah you know, obviously working for Becker and teaching a lot for the CPA exam, I deal with people from still in college all the way to maybe in their fifties that are studying for the CPA exam. So now you're later in your career. Was that a difficult process for you to go back into that scholastic and academic mode and work during the day, study at night and pass these exams now that you're, you know, not say in college?
00:25:16
Speaker
ah So yes and no. i think one thing that will come across in the in my story is that I am a lifelong learner. So even while I was at Herman Miller, I went back and got another master's degree in leadership and human resource development.
00:25:29
Speaker
I'm a fan of both formal and informal learning. So so the the going back to school mindset was not not new for me.
00:25:40
Speaker
And I that is no accident. I ended up in learning and development as somebody who just really loves to learn. The going back 35 years to what I had learned as an undergraduate and trying to resurface all of that so that I could master the skills and the computations to pass the CPA exam.
00:26:01
Speaker
You know, it is everything that anyone says that it is. I spent so many hours. I I don't know that I knew what I was taking on when I decided to do that.
00:26:11
Speaker
But once I was in it, i I was going to see my way through. And i I put a lot of time and effort into studying and and mastering that material. And did you study on your own for that or did you go back to school? How did you go through the process?
00:26:26
Speaker
ah Well, no, I heavily relied on Becker's exam prep. That was something that we offered complimentary to all of our colleagues who wanted to pursue that. So it seemed like a great opportunity.
00:26:39
Speaker
And something I haven't shared is that I had a leader one time. who every year would ask me, how do you want to stretch yourself this year? And in the beginning, I used to say, oh, well, I'd love to take this certificate or program or I'd love to do this thing. And I would do things that I knew I could probably be successful at. I just wanted some financial backing or support to do that.
00:27:03
Speaker
And then I realized that she was really serious. And so I started stretching myself more and more and picking more outlandish. I say outlandish. They were relevant to my career, but picking things that really would move me outside my comfort zone.
00:27:19
Speaker
And I don't like to fail at things. And so part of how now that I don't work for her anymore and do it for myself, every year I take on something that would really stretch me outside my comfort zone that I might actually fail at so that I can get myself more comfortable with with failure or trying things and maybe not
Contributions at BPM and Decision to Start Own Business
00:27:40
Speaker
succeeding.
00:27:41
Speaker
And literally, you can fail the CPA exam. So that was that was my goal for 2024 was to study and pass all four sections of the exam. Wow, that is an amazing story. Just because I know how difficult it is, the farther removed you are from school than to go back and put in the time. So if there's anybody out there who's listening and was always toying with the idea and said, ah you know what, I'm too late in my career, Obviously, Heather is a great example to say you are never too late to do it and it will always pay dividends for you. So that that's a good thing, but no sales pitch. No sales pitch from you right now on that. I want to know about this BPM. Okay, so you're in there now. Now you say to yourself, learning and development, I'm now a CPA. So how long did you stay at BPM and how did it feel working at an accounting firm?
00:28:30
Speaker
ah I loved working at an accounting firm. It felt like things were coming full circle. It was exciting work. I see a lot of changes happening in the profession and being able to figure out how can I strategically support that from a learning and development perspective was a really exciting time of my career.
00:28:49
Speaker
i was the first was able to build the team to nine people. We were doing some really meaningful and impactful work. And I learned so much in the learning and development space.
00:29:01
Speaker
And I stayed there for four years. I just recently left in December of 2025. wow. ah wow That is pretty recent. So before we get into why you left and what you're doing right now, while you're there,
00:29:15
Speaker
Is there anything that you learned about the industry that kind of sparked your next great adventure, so to speak, after you left BPM?
00:29:27
Speaker
Absolutely. So there's a couple of things that I'm doing now. One is learning consulting, serving as a fractional chief learning officer and also doing some delivery of programs.
00:29:39
Speaker
And one of the things that I noticed is that most firms are just not able to make the investment in a full-time learning and development team.
00:29:50
Speaker
And the accounting profession is so much driven. Just if you start looking at what we're required to do and know from a continuing education perspective and the compliance piece of that, that's one aspect.
00:30:03
Speaker
But how much things change in on an annual basis, ah whether it be regulatory or it just be the the business and economic markets changing, there's a need for consistent learning and consistent development throughout someone's career path.
00:30:21
Speaker
And it became apparent that many firms just don't have access to that specialized type of resource and may not be ready to hire someone full time.
00:30:32
Speaker
So how can they get access to that without feeling like they have to make this long term commitment? So you're at BPM, you have this idea.
00:30:44
Speaker
Now, did you just decide to leave on your own to dive more into this and you know evaluate, hey, can I do this professionally? This is more interesting to me. How do you go about what's the thought process to get into that next chapter?
00:31:00
Speaker
You know, i there I guess there is always some pivotal moment where, um you know, you've thought about doing something and then when are you really going to put action behind that? And I had some strategic conversations with my leader about what was next in my career, where where could I move up to And when you're at a director level, like those options start start getting slimmer. ah And So I had always toyed around with this idea of owning my own business and what I would do and how that would look and had some strategic conversations and got a lot of support for doing that and worked out an exit strategy that did not leave the team in a lurch, did not leave the firm in a lurch, and also allowed me to springboard into what I believed was my next chapter.
Mission of Movora Strategies and Leadership Development
00:31:52
Speaker
So tell me about this chapter. You know, you started your own business. What do you call it and what are you doing right now? Yeah, the first business I started was called or is called Movora Strategies. And I came up with that name because it is the Latin root, moveri, which means to move. And what I love helping organizations do is move with purpose.
00:32:16
Speaker
And the the initial approach belief was that it would be a fractional chief learning officer consultancy that would allow smaller firms to have access to senior level strategic expertise in the learning space.
00:32:33
Speaker
And while I'm doing some of that work, what has been surprising to me is How many people have reached out from different chapters of my past to ask if I could bring work that they knew me for to their organizations where they are now. And so I've been doing a lot of work in both the leadership development space, as well as the coaching space and the psychological safety space. Those are some of the things that I am best known for.
00:33:02
Speaker
So this business is still in its infancy, not even a year old, basically. yeah Is it becoming very busy? Is it just you? Do you have to hire staff? What's happening?
00:33:15
Speaker
yeah So ah it's it's been surprisingly busy. That has been the thing that I've been most surprised by is, and this is probably a key takeaway for listeners, is Always like do excellent work, do meaningful, impactful work wherever you're planted.
00:33:35
Speaker
And you heard me say earlier in the podcast that what I took from those years in education and even in Mary Kay is loving the opportunity to be part of someone's growth, development, see them become more than they ever thought they could be.
00:33:52
Speaker
And i that carried through my time at Herman Miller, working with leaders there. Those leaders have moved on and some are now CEOs at their own company. They are sales leaders inside organizations.
00:34:07
Speaker
And they have come back to me and said, here is the thing that you taught me. I still have this sitting next to me on my desk. They would reach behind them on their bookshelf. I still have this. And You know, that's so meaningful to someone who does what I do, that it's not about the time they were with me in the classroom. It's that you had an opportunity to have such an impact or share something that's had such an impact for them, that they're keeping it alive.
00:34:38
Speaker
even when I'm not there four or five, six years later, and asking if I can now bring that to the organizations where they are today. And, you know, a I didn't do those things with the intent that, well, 15 years from now, I'm going to start a business and I'm going to hope that you're going to want to do business with me.
00:34:58
Speaker
I
Skills-Based Learning Culture and SaaS Tool Development
00:34:59
Speaker
just bloomed where I was planted and did work that I thought would leave people better than I found them. And that network has shown up for me in ways that I could never have imagined. and I've already had to subcontract help to for the work that I'm doing and for the work that um I've been contracted for leading into the future.
00:35:23
Speaker
And I just feel so incredibly blessed by that. And, you know, it it was really seeds that I planted years ago that continue to bear fruit. Well, it sounds very adamant. And almost in line with what you originally did with special education, right? Helping these children that need a extra assistance become better people and have better lives. And now you're kind of doing it not so much in the special education realm, but doing it with professionals and helping them in their careers. So there's definitely a parallel there.
00:35:54
Speaker
Oh, 100%. And usually there's somebody who's cracking a joke about ah the reason why your special education background serves you well is ah because we all have special needs. So ah I don't I don't feel that way. But usually somebody is cracking a joke about how that background applies today.
00:36:13
Speaker
Now, you mentioned something, though, when I asked about this business and you said first business. So I'm not understanding. What do you mean first business? Yeah, well, one of the things you'll learn about me is that I don't typically let grass grow under my feet. And there was a project that I was working on at BPM and a problem that was brought to me around how can we increase our speed to proficiency for our colleagues? There was a belief that
00:36:47
Speaker
because of COVID and because of the move to more hybrid and distributed work environments, that our colleagues were not growing as fast in their career as they had pre-COVID.
00:37:00
Speaker
I didn't exist. pre I wasn't around pre-COVID. So I don't know how true that was. But I can definitely see that the types of environments where everybody came into the office and was sitting at workstations or were sitting in a conference room at an audit site.
00:37:19
Speaker
There's a lot of organic conversations that maybe I wasn't working on that section of the audit, or maybe that wasn't even a project I was working on, but I overheard the person in the cubicle next to me talking about a ah client issue that they were trying to figure out. And you start to pick up you know certain things, not because you actually worked on it, but just from osmosis and other conversations you have the chance to overhear.
00:37:44
Speaker
And in the hybrid remote distributed environment, you don't always have that organicness that's happening. You have to intentionally get people on a call to overhear those conversations. And so I could see where they're were that may may be the case, that people were not getting that exposure as frequently as they had in the past.
00:38:07
Speaker
And I was asked to kind of think through what a solution could be for that and how we could address performance and speed to proficiency in a different way.
00:38:18
Speaker
And so i I came up with moving more to a skills-based, I shouldn't say I came up with it. and It's a movement that's happening in learning and development. But I definitely wanted to figure out how we could look at a skills-based learning culture for accounting.
00:38:36
Speaker
And that was a project that I was able to take with me. And I started a second company to bring that to market for the accounting profession around how we build greater a skills transparency and be more explicit about what people need to know and be able to do at each level of their career.
00:38:58
Speaker
map learning to it. And then also, well, now how do I demonstrate and validate that my skills are at that level so that we can staff better, we can measure how quickly people are becoming proficient in their roles and make better promotion decisions, better succession decisions, better staffing decisions when we have the right talent intelligence.
00:39:22
Speaker
So to me, what I take from that, it sounds like you're starting a second company to try to help people upskill, right? To increase their value, their skill sets. And you're talking about measuring it, but is this something, you know, you're measuring with a ruler or are we talking this as a computer program? Like how do you measure all of this?
00:39:41
Speaker
Yeah, so this is a SaaS-based product ah that is software-based, but it's more than just the the software and the technology that supports it. That's just the engine that runs behind it. It's really about breaking down what is needed of us into so and just measurable, objective, observable skills.
00:40:05
Speaker
to be able to put behaviors behind that. So i can describe what the skill is, but then I also have to describe what it looks like in practice, in behavior.
00:40:16
Speaker
And then how do we map learning and experiences to that? So if i I'm expected to be able to do that, and we we are very clear about what those behaviors look like at each level, because the proficiency in that that I need as an associate is different than when I move into a senior role or when I move into a manager role. Those skills continue to get more complex.
00:40:39
Speaker
So how do we how do we describe those behaviors? How do we map learning and experiences so that I can learn how to do that? And then to your point, how do we validate that?
00:40:50
Speaker
How do we make sure that if we're taking some of the subjectiveness out of it? I think that's been a frustration both on the colleague side of I'm waiting to get feedback or different people are telling me that I'm performing at different levels.
00:41:07
Speaker
I don't have a clear way of knowing exactly where I stand today and be able to prove that I'm at the proficiency that you're asking of me. And so we have built that out from a skills ontology. We're mapping things.
00:41:21
Speaker
Different ways that we can measure that, that don't always rely on a manager to give feedback or a manager judgment, that we can make some of that more objective and take some of the pressure, the administrative pressure off managers and make that available to the profession as a whole.
00:41:39
Speaker
So let me try to understand this. If I think before software was around, a traditional review process is a manager has to review the people that work for him maybe once a quarter, maybe twice a year, maybe maybe just once a year. But now you have this software, this technology that could do it on a more regular basis. So do we still have these manual reviews or is it just a constant review through the
Managing Multiple Businesses and Credentials
00:42:05
Speaker
software? How do we marry the two, the old school personal review with this software?
00:42:11
Speaker
For me, it's a yes and. I don't think one replaces the other. i think they they complement each other in different ways. So let's let's go back to how we've traditionally looked at this. And maybe we have a competency written around communication skills that says something like, ah must be able to effectively communicate with the client on pending issues.
00:42:36
Speaker
Effective communication. What does that mean? And Mike, if I ask you, and you're going to describe it to me one way. If I go to another manager or another partner, they might describe it as another way.
00:42:49
Speaker
So if I'm trying to get good at that competency and I want to be evaluated properly, fairly on that competency, I'm now stuck with trying to make sense of the way you see it, the way someone else sees it, the way my third manager sees it, and then wondering how that's all going to play out at the end of the day when you all are discussing my performance. And I don't have much agency over that because I'm going to try to do things, but then I've got to wait now for you to give me feedback to let me know whether I'm on track or not.
00:43:22
Speaker
So the way that I see this be behaving differently is the the software. It's not about the software. The software is just what makes the engine run.
00:43:35
Speaker
I want to be able as an individual to to know exactly what's expected of me, be able to tune in to some sort of dashboard in real time so that I can look at all the things that you're expecting of me, what that looks like at my job level,
00:43:52
Speaker
And know where I am today. And if I have to wait and say every six months or even every quarter for you to give me feedback, number one, we're just as humans, we're not super great at giving feedback ah for a number of reasons. A, there's just human bias. There's our own perspectives and opinions that come into it that may or may not reflect what the expectation truly is.
00:44:22
Speaker
So we're just not good raters of other people when we're looking at quality, especially something like effective communication. But what we are good at doing is talking about my experience. Like how often do I notice you doing very specific behaviors in communication that I can say, well, I see that sometimes, or I see you doing that all the time, or actually I've never seen you do that yet.
00:44:49
Speaker
And what this does is allow me to validate those skills in some more objective ways. And depending upon the skill set, there's lots of ways we can measure it.
00:45:02
Speaker
And depending upon how proficient you need to be. But I see this as more of an employee having more agency and ownership over their career growth and development.
00:45:13
Speaker
So if I'm a go-getter and I want to move quickly through my career, I may be working hard to
Reflecting on Education's Role in Career
00:45:21
Speaker
get all of those experiences, all of those reps that I can have the opportunity to do under my belt and say, I'm ready for you to evaluate me. And maybe there's an assessment I take.
00:45:32
Speaker
Maybe there's a Maybe there's an AI-based simulation I can participate in to get objective feedback, even around my communication skills. How often did you listen to the other person? How did you respond to them?
00:45:47
Speaker
Those are things that um AI can help us evaluate now in some ah more objective ways and spit out feedback. and When I'm able to do that, I have more control and ownership over my career growth around how quickly i want to learn.
00:46:04
Speaker
And it also gives us a way to be more consistent across a job level. So, for example, i can be I know as an associate that all of us at the associate level are going to be evaluated against the same criteria.
00:46:19
Speaker
And if we figure out through our experimentation that it takes a year for somebody to get all of the skills to the required proficiency in their role,
00:46:30
Speaker
then at the end of the year, if I'm not tracking where I need to be, now we can clearly know what underperformance is versus, no, this is somebody who's made tremendous progress over the last six months. They're tracking exactly where they need to be. They know still what's ahead of them versus somebody that has been in their role for a year is only 25% through their level.
00:46:55
Speaker
their skill proficiency And we need to be having a different conversation around where the struggle is happening. And I think that's just going to bring a lot more transparency to what to what's expected of us.
00:47:07
Speaker
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. So it sounds to me, I take out of this objective assessments and being able to maybe remove a bias from someone's judgment versus someone else's judgment.
Concluding Thoughts and Pursuing Passion
00:47:17
Speaker
But you brought up the whole technology, software, AI.
00:47:22
Speaker
How do you write a program to do this? I mean, do you yourself, are you a coder? Are you a programmer? Do you have to go out to somewhere else? And is AI a big competitor for you?
00:47:34
Speaker
So no, I am not a coder. And i i went to find a partner that has been that has had a technology built for the skills space for a long time and found out how I could partner with them to put our skills ontology into their framework. So I didn't start a whole new software company or build the technology myself. and I'm just reselling their product.
00:47:58
Speaker
Where, uh, No, AI is not a competitor to me. I actually believe because of what AI will disrupt in our profession and how skills will need to change is actually the amplifier to what I do.
00:48:15
Speaker
the And that's why I think moving to a skills-based learning culture is so important for for the profession. The competencies that we've been using for so long they're They're fairly vague.
00:48:26
Speaker
They're subjective. And if I really like you and I think you're a strong performer, i can I can figure out how to tell the story of how you demonstrate those competencies well.
00:48:38
Speaker
If I don't like you as much, I can also craft a story for how you're not meeting those competencies. And with the speed that things are going to be changing for our profession, rewriting those competencies is going to be hard for us to do.
00:48:54
Speaker
Whereas skills, I see more like Legos. If we no longer need to do this thing because now AI is doing that for us, great. We just pull that Lego out and we plug a new Lego in related to what we need people to be able to know and do now. And I think that gives us a lot more agility,
00:49:13
Speaker
in how we look at performance and how we look at success measures. And so i'd see it as I see it as an amplifier to what we're doing. And I think it gives us some great ways to objectively assess someone's performance in ways that we haven't before.
00:49:29
Speaker
But i also want to be clear that I'm not taking human judgment out. There are certain things where we're going to need feedback from the manager. But what I'm trying to do is minimize those because I heard from our leaders that they were spending so much time writing feedback and giving their perspective.
00:49:46
Speaker
But their perspective was one moment in time. And maybe that was one moment in time three months ago. And someone else is also talking about their moment in time. And sometimes they don't always align.
00:49:58
Speaker
And so how do we really know how someone's doing when we're just seeing them ah for short spurts of time on a job? Well, it sounds like a lot. You have the first company that's up and running fractional CLO, and now we have this software company that's helping with the transparent assessments. Are are you just burning it a candle at both ends, or do you have time to really manage both of them? How does your personal life work running two businesses?
00:50:27
Speaker
Well, they they feel complimentary, but I did set them up as two separate companies because I felt like they had different audiences and different purposes. And I have people that I partner with. So I have two partners in what we call scale talent systems, which is the skills based talent intelligence platform.
00:50:45
Speaker
I have the technology partner, and then I also have an implementation partner that helps me work with directly with customers on the implementation, on customization of the skills ontology, things like that.
00:50:58
Speaker
But I believe that this is something that's really going to have a transformational impact on the profession. And I'm pretty motivated by that and the opportunity to be part of something that I think will shape the future of where we're all headed.
00:51:14
Speaker
and help us better navigate what's what's ahead. So it's interesting to me when I looked at your name and your title and I saw all the different letters that were after your name, you know some of the stuff I recognize, CPA and you know Masters in Education, but there were two other ones, PCC and SPHR. What are those credentials? Yeah.
00:51:39
Speaker
So the PCC is my coaching credential. I have been, and ah continue to be an executive coach. That's not the central part of my business, but it's something I do, especially in the leadership development space, working on leaders.
00:51:54
Speaker
And I'm in the process of upgrading that credential right now to what's called a master certified coach, which just means I have over 2,500 hours of coaching experience and, um,
00:52:06
Speaker
my my recordings, I have to actually record and submit and have those coaching sessions evaluated to make sure that I'm coaching at that level. And then SPHR is a senior professional of human resources. So learning and development typically sits in the human resource space.
00:52:25
Speaker
And so that was, it's just important to me. Like I said, I'm a lifelong learner. And if I'm going to If I'm going to learn something and build something into my career, I'm typically going to go after the credential that gives me credibility in the space, make sure it's not just something that I say I can do, but that i'm I'm proving that I'm proficient at it. So it's probably no surprise that I've ended up in the skills-based space, helping accountants be able to show their proficiency because it's just something I value in my own in my own life
00:53:02
Speaker
Well, for everybody listening, I told you there were a lot of chapters and there is a lot of amazing stuff going on here. So if I look at your professional art, you know starting in education, going into cosmetic sales, furniture sale, learning and development, being a coach, global talent management, all the way now to business owner and software developer, it is wild. And throw a CPA and a cpa in there ah and ah some extra you know bachelor degrees and stuff.
00:53:33
Speaker
I am exhausted just listening to this. Could you ever have envisioned this for yourself? Absolutely not. In fact, I often laugh when when I hear it out loud. I'm like, that is so ridiculous. Who would have ever charted that out? And I think that's kind of the point.
00:53:51
Speaker
People often ask, well what did you do to get to your position and how can I follow in your footsteps? And I'm like, well, definitely don't follow in my footsteps because this is this is not a traditional path by any means whatsoever.
00:54:03
Speaker
But what I have taken away and what I've learned and what I encourage others to do is if you you were really hearing the underlying piece of my story, i always pursued what was interesting to me.
00:54:18
Speaker
And when I pursued what really interested in me or what I was fascinated by, it tended to open another window that gave me another perspective.
00:54:29
Speaker
another piece of the story. And so I really followed my passion. I really followed my interest. I followed the things that gave me energy and that I felt like were really having a positive impact for others around me and where I could really make a difference and add value.
00:54:46
Speaker
i think that's what makes me unique. I don't know anybody else in the in the accounting space who has the background and does the things I do. But I wouldn't be doing that if it wasn't for all of these experiences. And so I'm grateful for each one. And I never could have imagined this is where I would end up.
00:55:04
Speaker
So let me ask you a hypothetical question, you know your opinion. How important was that business and that accounting background? would you Do you think you could do what you've done without that? Or tell me, how important was that?
00:55:19
Speaker
You know, of course, I can't say would I have done it or could I have done it without it? I'm pretty scrappy, so I probably would have figured out a way. But I would tell you, i believe it's been invaluable. Understanding how business works from the day that I owned my own business as an independent contractor to fast forward today, owning my own business understanding.
00:55:40
Speaker
i've always and even when i worked internal inside other organizations i always treated my department as or even my own responsibilities as my own business i think i've always brought that entrepreneurial mindset to whatever i do that The things that I do are developing my my reputation and my brand and what I'll be known for. And so I've always taken a lot of personal accountability for that.
00:56:06
Speaker
And I'm so grateful that I started my career in business administration and accounting. You know, I thought it was going to look like working in accounting and being a tax attorney. And I so can't even imagine myself doing that today, knowing the things I love. ah But it was part of my story and it was part of what shaped me and gave me valuable experience and background.
00:56:29
Speaker
Would you, when you go on your speaking engagements, recommend the accounting degree to a lot of these young people right now? I absolutely would. And I think we're on the precipice of accounting looking very different, but in a very positive way for future generations. You know, people sometimes say, well, I'm not a good math person or things like that. and so maybe accounting is not for me because they equate it with that skill set.
00:56:58
Speaker
But I think as we look at ah moving towards more of an advisory capacity and how we're AI may be taking over some of the technical aspects of our work. So the value of an accountant is going to be helping to make sense of what we're learning, how to help our clients through ah things that they may never have have experienced or there may not be a best practice because things are changing so rapidly. Some of the things that are happening in our world, we don't have a playbook for. We didn't have a playbook for the pandemic. We didn't have a playbook for some of the geopolitical things that are happening.
00:57:37
Speaker
And that's where this advisory skill set is going to be so important as we move into the future. So i I think the... That where we're headed as a profession makes it even more enticing to students who are looking at a career and trying to decide what they want to do. And that we're going to draw a different crowd than maybe we have traditionally drawn when ah more of our work was focused on our our technical production.
00:58:04
Speaker
Yeah. And you definitely did not have a playbook for Hurricane Katrina, that's for sure, right? You just don't know what life is going to throw at you, but how we adapt and respond and improvise and overcome is so important, and you did that so well. So let me ask you this. If anyone's listening right now and they say, hey, fractional CLO, can I get more information from Heather or maybe on your software company and the transparency and assessments of employees, do you have a website or how will people get more information about this?
00:58:33
Speaker
I sure do. So ah my talent and learning management consultancy is Movora Strategies. That's M-O-V-O-R-A strategies.com.
00:58:44
Speaker
ah You can also find me on LinkedIn. And our talent intelligence platform is called Scale Talent Systems. And we're on all the social media, but also scaletalentsystems.com is the website for that company. And we have a free white paper that talks about what's changing in the profession.
00:59:03
Speaker
Thank you so much for taking all of this time and giving us your story. And it really is unique and it is extremely interesting. And I love how just one chapter led to the next chapter, but through it all, your business and your accounting and running that business, all is the underlying foundation of everything. so I know that I got a lot out of this listening to you. I'm sure our audience did. And I know you're going to be doing some um podcasts of your own. Is that something you do as well, I believe?
00:59:35
Speaker
It is. I love doing podcasts and sharing some of the things that I'm passionate around, adult development, leadership. The other one I'm doing is around the advisory mindset. So I will be i'll be a frequent guest on Becker Podcast, and I'm really excited about that.
00:59:54
Speaker
Well, I will tune into those. So it's good to know. And again, thank you so much for coming. I really appreciate all your time. Great stories. And I look forward to hopefully working with you again one day in the future.
01:00:07
Speaker
Thanks, Mike. I feel like we're old friends because you were in a lot of my CPA exam prep. You may not know me, but I got a chance to know you very well. And um I hope our listeners today just take away the message of follow your heart. Don't feel like you have to have your career path completely figured out. Just chase the next thing that's really calling to you. And it becomes a beautiful journey.
01:00:30
Speaker
Excellent. Thanks again, Heather. And I'm sure we'll speak again soon. Thanks so much, Mike. Hey, everyone. I just want to thank you for listening to the podcast today with Heather Esposito. And really, a special thanks to Heather for joining me today and sharing her story.
01:00:45
Speaker
But before we leave, I just want to make sure everyone is aware you can actually earn CPE credit just for listening to this podcast. All you need to do is visit the link in the show notes to get your credit.
01:00:57
Speaker
And even better news, if you're already a Prime CPE subscriber, you can earn CPE at no extra cost. Just log in to finalize your credits. Thanks again for attending today, and we hope to see you in another Becker Accounting Podcast in the future.