McGladrey women are raising the roof

A team of 16 women from Minneapolis recently participated in Habitat for Humanity’s Women Build program. Women Build is a program for women who want to learn construction skills and build homes and communities. The Twin Cities chapter builds two homes a year using solely women volunteers and project leaders.

After being involved in a Minneapolis Industrial Products team who worked on a Habitat house that was sponsored in part by a McGladrey client, assurance director, Kari Henry and assurance associate, Kayla Kirby learned of the Twin Cities Women Build program. They asked Minneapolis office managing partner, Mike Nelson, if he would support a team of women for a Women Build daylong event. His response was, “Absolutely!”

Together, the McGladrey team put up the garage trusses and started covering the roof while others cut and installed concrete siding trim in preparation for siding the house.

Kari Henry said, “It was a great day of team building, with a lot of laughter. It was empowering to see the progress we made in one short day and to know that we were helping a family who has worked hard to achieve a dream that many people take for granted—home ownership.”

The McGladrey bay area offices are growing significantly and hiring!

By Tim Tiefenthaler
Office Managing Partner-Bay Area

The San Francisco Bay Area is known for its beauty, entrepreneurship and diversity. The Bay Area is such a dynamic market that continues to experience significant population and economic growth.

McGladrey has been capitalizing on the momentum in this market by more than doubling our practice in less than a year. In 2013, we are proud to have transferred in 15 partners, directors, managers and other professionals from McGladrey offices from all regions of the firm along with recruiting many strategic local hires as well.

As our strong growth momentum continues, we are seeing increased interest from talented professionals who want to be part of the McGladrey experience. We continue to look for audit, tax and consulting professionals, particularly audit seniors who want to expand their skills and industry exposure.

Consider being part of our growing team and the energy and opportunity that comes from being part of a high growth practice. Experience a firm and practice that truly cares about you and your success and providing a professional and respectful culture. If you, or someone you know, would be a good addition to our San Jose or San Francisco offices, please contact Gordon Woo.

San Jose Office

San Francisco open positions

San Jose open positions



McGladrey Chicago office donates to Bear Necessities

By Catherine Berta
Manager
Chicago, IL

When I first heard about the Chicago office champion role for the firmwide Birdies Fore Love program, I could only think about the positives. This program supports children- and family-based charities by allowing participants to pledge by either dollar amounts or per birdie made at The McGladrey Classic. This role was perfect for me! I love helping others in need and was excited to lead my office of 787 employees to really make a difference in our community. With that many employees, just think about the collective impact that we could make on a local charity.  When I was chosen for the role, I was faced with apprehension. I had so many ideas; how was I going to have the time and resources to execute them?

My first challenge was to choose a charity for the Chicago office to support throughout the program. After reaching out to the Chicago office and receiving over 50 suggestions, we narrowed it down to a charity called Bear Necessities Pediatric Cancer Foundation. Bear Necessities’ mission is to eliminate pediatric cancer and provide hope and support to those who are touched by it. When I first called Bear Necessities, I was baffled yet comforted by one of the comments that the woman on the other side of the phone said. She said, “We are working to hopefully be unemployed one day.” That comment reassured me that this charity was the right choice.

Next, I needed to communicate the details of the Birdies Fore Love program and the charity selection. Representatives from Bear Necessities assisted me in holding informational sessions with the Chicago office. One of the videos that Bear Necessities showed, in which young children spoke about their pediatric cancer treatments, touched all of us.

An amazing group of 22 employees from the Chicago office formed a committee to help me come up with ideas to raise donations and execute them. And we had a lot of ideas! We had friendly competitions between our four floors to encourage participation, a chili cook-off and manicures in the office. We had an NFL pick ‘em league, an ice cream social and a couple of jeans weeks. I learned a lot from these events, discovering what motivates Chicago employees and what necessarily does not work so well. I met a lot of people too. Whether they were annoyed with my constant emails or not, I think everyone appreciated the effort that was going into the program. I look forward to passing these lessons onto next year’s Chicago office champion.

Filming the PSA in Chicago

A week before the end of the program, there was a PSA filming in Chicago to feature the Birdies Fore Love programs across the country and I got to be on TV! Before we started filming, we had about 20 minutes of hair and makeup to make sure our faces, and bald heads for the guys, weren’t shiny. My lipstick was a lot brighter than I was used to, but was told that the camera would dim it out. I was amazed by the preparation of the scene before we arrived and the adjustments that they made after we arrived. There were dozens of lighting modifications and camera variations for a scene that was only six seconds long! I was honored to represent the Bear Necessities charity by holding a picture of a little girl that was battling cancer.  

The Chicago office raised over $24,000 for Bear Necessities Pediatric Cancer Foundation. We hope that our donation gets Bear Necessities Pediatric Cancer Foundation employees one step closer to their goal of unemployment.




Thank you to the following McGladrey PSA participants:

Catherine Berta
Katsy Douangvichit      
Karen Wang
John Sweezey
Alex Bauer
Marlon Fortineaux
Nicole Baillie
Juan Barajas
Vivian Myers
Vanessa Kuo
Anthony Reo

Honoring those who serve our country

Today, we join the country in observing Veterans Day—a celebration to honor America’s military veterans for their patriotism, love of country, and willingness to serve and sacrifice for the common good. 

We are honored to have many active and retired military members as part of the McGladrey family, including Davenport Supervisor Peter Pentland and Tacoma Senior Associate Shaun Cuthbert. 

Peter and Shaun are a couple shining examples of what it means to honor your country with a selfless act of service. We know that we count many more heroes in our ranks. We thank all of them for their stewardship to our country and for the values they represent—values that correspond with McGladrey’s values as a firm that are tied to our history and critical to our future success. 

McGladrey attends Working Mother Work Life Congress

By Stephanie Repke

Talent Management Associate

Minneapolis, MN

 

McGladrey is celebrating our seventh year as one of Working Mother’s Best 100 companies. And for the second time in my relatively short tenure here, I was privileged to join my McGladrey colleagues, teammates and leaders the last week of October at the Working Mother Work Life Congress in New York City, at the heart of Times Square. At this two-day conference event, we heard – and shared – best practices, ongoing challenges and newest trends in the WorkLife, wellness and flexibility arena. The culmination of the event was a gala dinner celebration of the Best 100 companies, where our own Working Mother of the Year Jill Reyes was recognized.

 

Particularly exciting, though, was seeing our Principal National HR Leader, Katie Lamkin, present the results of the McGladrey sponsored “How We Flex” white paper, a study on the workplace flexibility needs of working moms. One of the key points of the white paper showed that it’s better when managers flex. Katie shared the story of McGladrey’s own flex evolution, and brought to life the ‘pay it forward’ concept – that managers who flex their schedules help ‘lead by example’ for their employees to work flexibly as well. I would highly recommend checking out the full white paper, which includes the flex success stories that Katie shared about assurance partner Jim Smith and director Erin Peterson.

 

Hearing threads of Katie’s presentation referenced by speakers and attendees alike throughout the sessions of conference was incredibly rewarding; McGladrey had a presence at this event like never before. And people loved hearing about our iPad program (all employees who work at least a 50% time schedule receive an iPad)!

 

For those who have been to their fair share of conferences, it can be pretty hit-or-miss in terms of quality – from the topics of breakouts to the richness of discussion. But I can safely say that this one exceeded my expectations. As someone who has been fortunate enough to work a flexible schedule (flexing my hours outside of traditional business hours) for my entire career, I’m still learning new things every day about finding success through WorkLife flexibility and wellness. Some of my favorite tidbits:

• Work is not a place; it’s something you do.
• Redefine the ‘badge of honor’ at work. Asking for flexibility and pursuing WorkLife integration shouldn’t make you feel guilty.
• “Tweak It” - small tweaks we make to the way we work and live can create impactful changes over time in how we manage our professional and personal endeavors.
• Manage your calendar as one, not work and personal.
• We as employees have an individual responsibility not only to ask for what we want, but to manage ourselves in a flexible and mobile work environment.
• Flex really is for everyone, but there is no one-size-fits-all approach. Having ongoing conversations, especially with your manager and teammates, is essential to ongoing success

McGladrey team at Working Mother Work Life Congress