FIRST AICPA CHAIR FROM INDUSTRY REPRESENTS PARADIGM SHIFT

Olivia F. Kirtley became the first AICPA chair to hail from business and industry. Seeing that CPAs in business and industry now represent the largest single constituency in the membership of the AICPA, her election is long overdue. This month's cover story is an interview with the new chair. She began her career in the tax department of a Big Five firm and, like so many, changed careers to join one of her clients.

During her year of leadership, Kirtley's major emphasis will be implementation of the CPA Vision Process. The vision statement has been written, the core purpose has been articulated, and the top five core services, competencies, and values have been ranked. Now it is time to equip CPAs to convert the vision into concrete actions that will benefit them into 2011 and beyond. Kirtley relates her plans to launch this process. She also describes other aspects of her program for the year and the path she took to become AICPA chair.

In addition, this month's issue includes an update on GASB's progress toward producing a new financial reporting model for governments. GASB has promised a new standard by June 1999 and is pulling out all the stops to make it happen. The decision to have a single, entity-wide presentation on the full accrual basis seems to have broken the logjam in developing a new standard. Statements on a traditional fund basis will be a subset of and reconciled to the entity-wide statements. *

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