Embracing Equity in the Accounting Industry

This International Women’s Day we want to celebrate the trailblazing efforts of our Partner group with their work around equity and opportunity. Partner Suzanne Welch is the first female Partner at the firm, and also recently helped to pave the way for women in Partnership across the accounting world who are challenged with balancing work and family.

A year ago, Suzanne took leave to prepare for the birth of her son and recently shared her experience as a female leader and business owner preparing to grow her family. She said:

“Since this is the first time we’ve had a partner go on maternity leave we’ve been taking it all in as a learning experience. We found out very quickly that a Partner going on maternity leave is not very common (yet) in the accounting industry.?Other firms that we reached out to had not had this experience yet, and as such, none had created a maternity leave policy for Partners.?

Before I joined as a Partner, we established the policy that if any Partner got?sick/needed?to go on medical leave (maternity leave included), the other Partners would step in to ensure clients continued to receive our high standard of service and care for a minimum of three months.

So, from April-June, all of my clients were taken care of by the other Partners.?This allowed me to fully disconnect from work in the first few months of my son’s life, with peace of mind.?Work and Partner responsibilities were reallocated to the rest of the Partner group, and staff and clients were notified in advance of the temporary change.

After those first months focusing on family, I started to manage my own client work and emails again, on a remote basis.?The transition back was a gradual one, with Partners continuing to assist as needed along the way. Now that my son is a bit older and my husband is on paternity leave, I’m able to again have a more predictable work schedule.

I am so grateful to have had the opportunity to continue to build my career in the accounting space while also continuing to grow my family. I’m thankful to my fellow Partners for their ongoing support as we map out new policies which further establish equity in our industry.”

Thanks to Suzanne for sharing her story to celebrate International Women’s Day and allowing us to kick off our month-long celebration of amazing women in leadership at MAC LLP! ?Stay tuned!