Sharing a Common Purpose

I was the first in my family to go to college and I had no idea what to study. I was good at math and science. At one point, I dreamed of building roads and bridges in remote places and considered engineering. Fortunately, a mentor suggested studying physics as a path to many careers. I loved the coursework, the challenge, and the time spent solving hard problems together with my classmates. Ten years later, I had a PhD in Physics and realized that working alone in a lab was not the life for me.

Fortunately, my mentor was right. I was hired by AT&T Bell Laboratories to help solve problems of running a (really big) telephone company. So, my wife and I bought our first house, packed up our apartment and 10-week-old son, and we moved from California to New Jersey. Over the next 15 years I learned a lot about the telecommunications and software industries and had the opportunity to meet and collaborate with people from around the United States and in Europe and Asia. We were all working to help telephone companies operate more efficiently by integrating management systems into their business operations.

Eight years later I was offered a position selling the kinds of software systems I had been designing to Japanese telephone companies. My remarkable
wife immediately agreed to pack up our young family and move to Tokyo. Once again, I found myself collaborating with people, this time across business cultures and nationalities, to solve complex business challenges. I was in my element. We stayed for six years, and our family had life experiences we each treasure to this day.

After 15 years of corporate life, I decided to seek my fortune outside of the corporate umbrella. Over the next 10 years, I found myself providing management and business consulting to and within a number of technology companies from very large to very small. The common themes of my work during this period were solving interesting problems and working collaboratively with others.

So, what does any of this have to do with my enrolled agent (EA) journey?

Over that 10-year interval, technology companies came and went with regularity and so did my work opportunities. I decided I wanted some stability in my work life and sought a new career that I could pursue as long as I wanted to and at a pace of my choosing. One of my sisters was an enrolled agent and I thought becoming a trusted tax advisor would allow me to help clients while solving interesting (tax) problems. Besides, I had been preparing my own tax returns since I was a teen. How hard could this be?

So, I interned with my sister’s and her partner’s practice for two tax seasons, earned my EA license, bought a practice, and became a member of the National Association of Enrolled Agents (NAEA). I just completed my 15th tax season.

I will not bore you with the ins-and-outs on my practice. We all know the challenges we face with rapidly evolving technology and an ever more complex tax environment.

I do want to share what my NAEA membership has meant to me. When my EA license arrived in the mail, I immediately joined NAEA and started
attending monthly meetings of the New Jersey Society of Enrolled Agents (NJSEA). I remained a passive member for a few years, though I did attend
summer conferences, earned my NTPI Fellow® designation and made some friends. But, in the summer of 2012, my friend and NJSEA president Christopher Thornton, EA, asked me to serve as secretary. All it took was someone asking me to get involved and I was hooked. We attended the Schuldiner/Smollan Leadership Academy (SSLA), several Affiliate Exchange meetings, and began to rebuild the NJSEA. I served as NJSEA vice
president, president, and past president, chaired the Education Committee, and saw NJSEA meeting attendance grow from 15-18 to 50-80 EAs. The opportunity to meet and collaborate with other members to help the organization become more vibrant was hugely satisfying.

I was asked to serve on NAEA’s Bylaws Committee during a time of some controversy and worked with committee members from across the country to sort out a challenging matter for the NAEA. I asked to serve on the Membership Committee and found myself digging deep into how many EAs there were, where they lived and worked, and how many were NAEA members. And I got to meet, work with, and become friends with more NAEA members from across the country. I attended NAEA board meetings, served on the Nominating Committee, and finally decided maybe I could help by serving on the board.

I just finished my fourth year of NAEA board service and my term as president, and I finally understood why I love this association so much. Helping our association help each of our members to succeed is a mission that takes many of us working together to achieve. I have made many friends from across the country, and we all work together with a common purpose. This is the kind of environment in which I receive great joy and satisfaction. I encourage every member to get involved in some way, large or small. It can be hugely rewarding. I feel fortunate that my final career landed me at
the NAEA.