Welcome!
Greetings from your first Gen-X chapter president at East Bay Northern California Chapter of IMA – Bill Sievers. I Googled what some of the negative stereotypes are of Gen-X and I found that my generation (at the moment and as a stereotype) might not be on top of the latest technologies as compared to younger generations. Gen-X was the first generation to grow up with widespread adoption of personal computers. Technology is changing very quickly. The original Star Trek show used to have a line at the beginning that said something like “to boldly go where nobody has gone before”. To this I might add about our future as accountants, we might not go boldly, and we likely don’t have a choice of “going where nobody has gone before” in terms of all the new technology that is heading towards us in accounting whether we like it or not. Artificial intelligence (AI), robotic process automation (RPA), shareware, increased computing power and storage, international trade, business, and global conflict is driving enormous changes.
To prepare for these changes and impacts, to support you on your journey - your board’s strategy is to increase the ties between academics and the practice of accounting. Your chapter is prioritizing as usual continuing professional education. Continuing professional education helps us to learn and adapt to the required changes in the profession. We signed a renewal agreement with Kaplan to continue the monthly FMN sessions which we have been doing for many years. We are going to continue with scholarship support to accounting students and are going to increase support to California State University East Bay for accounting students. The chapter was left with a bequest from a member that passed away that directed funds for this type of support. It is something we are well prepared to assist with.
We have a great board team with Robert, Sherry, and Nilam continuing with us on board into this new fiscal year and we have added Ching-Lih and Kim who are accounting professors at California State University East Bay and Mika who is an accounting student at Golden Gate University. This will strengthen our academic ties. Increasingly the students and professors will be the ones that will help advise us with how to approach the intersection of technology and accounting. We can all help each other to adapt to the changes as that is one of the benefits to being in an association where being in the group benefits you as individuals with sharing of knowledge and best practices. I was recently working at a ~ 70,000 plus headcount global engineering company that was starting to turn on AI into its ERP cloud accounting modules. The AI was starting to do what humans used to do a few years ago at the clerical level in accounting. We are heading into the future quickly and I am glad we have an association to ride in the same boat together as we sail through these changes.
William Sievers
IMA East Bay - Northern California Chapter President
imawilliam295@gmail.com