From CPA to Chair: How George Forsythe found his path in the accounting world

By Tori Smith

Custom mattress-maker, vitamin packer, hiker and morel-mushroom fanatic are all titles that George Forsythe, CPA, has held.

As a child, George took note of his mother’s work at a small vitamin and supplement business. She handled packaging, mailing and invoicing at the company. George noted the aspects of accounting in her job as he worked alongside her.

He took two accounting classes in high school and continued his accounting education by majoring in business administration with a focus in accounting at Mary Washington College in Fredericksburg. As a freshman, George mapped out his educational timeline so he would be prepared to take the CPA Exam right out of school.

George passed three parts but didn’t pass the law section.

“Back then, you either failed with a 69 or passed with a 75,” George said. “Mine was rounded down to a 69. I took the law section another time and passed it.”

He credits passing the Exam not due to studying, but to someone else’s shared knowledge: Joe Ben Hoyle, associate professor of accounting at the University of Richmond.

“Joe Ben Hoyle got so many people to pass the Exam,” George said. “I would argue it was more his knowledge than my own skill.”

George took a job at WellsColeman in Richmond his last semester of college. He took an exam to become an FBI agent, following his original plan for his accounting path.

“It wasn’t meant to be — I took the entrance exam and didn’t meet all the criteria,” George said. At the accounting firm, he thought, “‘I really like what I do and where I am, so I’m going to see this through.’ It was my first job out of college, and I’ve been here 27 years.”

When he was first hired, George was able to get his accounting job registered as a three-credit hour internship through his college. Because his time there was turned into an internship, George changed all his classes to nighttime so he could work at the firm during the day due to tax season He would travel back and forth from Richmond to Fredericksburg every night to continue both his education and his job at WellsColeman.

Now, decades later, he’s managing partner at the firm and loves working with small businesses.

As chair of the VSCPA Board of Directors this year, George has three main initiatives he wants to promote: rolling conformity, firm capacity issues and member engagement.

Getting rolling conformity passed in Virginia is a huge priority, he said.

“We have a well-thought-out campaign that includes a grassroots effort that reaches out to members and engages their support and physical time. As we get to session in 2023, it’s going to the Richmond Capitol and meeting with legislators to convince them why rolling conformity is good for everyone.”

George said one of his first action plans is to hold Management of an Accounting Practice (MAP) roundtables to brainstorm solutions for rolling conformity.

George also wants to address the capacity and pipeline issues in the accounting world. Firms don’t have the support they need, and he wants to make it a priority.

“Baby boomers are exiting the profession and you have young professionals choosing careers like computer science or data analytics. COVID-19 has spun it up a little faster. People are choosing careers other than accounting. We’re becoming even more compressed.”

“We need to engage members to help solve this, because there isn’t one silver bullet,” George said.

Finally, he wants to engage with members and the community to work on solving these two initiatives.

George encourages high schoolers who are interested in joining the accounting profession to undergo exploration other than internships.

“A lot of firms offer internships; however, those are just as important as job shadows. To reach out to firms and say: ‘To no cost to you, can I come on site and just observe?’” George said. “One of the big challenges with internships is they can only allot so many people. If we add in week-long job shadows, we’d get more people exposed to what we do.”

George considers high schoolers a “gold mine of talent” that is overlooked.

“They’d typically work in food service, and that is necessary and has value. I would find that they’d get a more diverse experience at the CPA firm,” George said.

When George isn’t spreading awareness in the accounting community or working with one of his clients, he enjoys spending his time outdoors. But he still finds a way to share his joy of the outdoors with his accounting clients.

George was hiking with his best friend, co-founder of a triennial hiking group, from one rim of the Grand Canyon to the other. The pair won a lottery to stay at a small cabin in the bottom of the canyon — Phantom Ranch. While hiking up the second side of the canyon, they had a thought.

“We felt like it was killing us at the time,” George said. “We were discussing, ‘Well, what should we do next?’” The answer? An even bigger challenge.

In 2017, he took seven of clients for a hike in Africa, and summited Mount Kilimanjaro. Every two or three years, the group hikes somewhere that they’ve never been. In 2021, the group visited Mount Rainier near Seattle. This year, they’re planning on the Banff Mountains in Canada.

“We have a real long list of places to go,” George said. “Our bucket list includes hiking to Everest basecamp and hiking in Iceland. We have a diverse group, but the commonality of everyone is that they’re clients at our firm.”

Although George does still hold many titles: fly-fishing enthusiast, lifeguard and Washington Post paper boy, he can now add one more title to his long list: chair of the VSCPA Board of Directors.

Tori Smith is the VSCPA 2022 summer communications intern. She is a journalism student at Ball State University in Muncie, Ind.