With its reputation for long hours during tax season, at first glance the accounting profession hardly seems the best environment for women looking to advance their careers while starting families and balancing other commitments of adult life.
And yet Accounting Today's 2025 Best Firms for Women have managed to create workplaces where women are building successful, long-term careers, using a common slate of policies and approaches.
Outside of the standard offerings of maternity leave, childcare support, paid time off, stress-relieving activities during busy season and team-building events in the slow season, the firms' philosophies for creating a culture where women can excel center around similar ideas, including the importance of integration versus balance, personalized flexibility, meeting employees where they're at, and evolving with them through their lives.
'Trusting teams' and more
Venturity, which ranked No. 1 on Accounting Today's 2025 Best Firms For Women list (see page 17), emphasizes "integration," rather than the one-size-fits-all term "balance."
"I'm a very big proponent of more integration than balance, and so defining integration and what works for you is very personal," said CEO Deanna Walker.
The Dallas-based team of 50 is roughly 60% women. Seven out of nine members of its leadership team, and three out of four of its executive leadership team, are women. The firm also has a long-time offshoring partner with 60 employees.
In 2017, Venturity switched to open-book management.
"We share our financials with our team members, and they get involved in forecasting and solving problems and knowing where they can make an impact to help us reach our financial goals," Walker said.
Three years later, in 2020, the firm transitioned to an employee stock ownership plan in which it sold 20% of the firm. Walker says the ESOP has improved retention and made a notable impact on firm culture by creating an "ownership mindset."
The firm has a hybrid work schedule where employees work three days in office and two days remote, with room for flexibility as needed. Walker said that employees are encouraged to share news of life events that will impact their ability to work, like pregnancies, without worrying that it may jeopardize their success or trajectory at the firm.
"The sooner we can start planning and understanding what's going on, the sooner we can put those contingency plans in place so they can go and take the time they need, and it doesn't put undue pressure on the team because it's all in the planning," Walker said.
Venturity also has internal meetings it calls "Trusting Teams," where employees discuss how they work together as a group — similar to how they have meetings with clients at the beginning of the relationship to establish expectations.
"I think that really underscores and supports a lot of things that we put in place culturally — putting your money where your mouth is, where you're getting very explicit about how you live it every day and what everyone's responsibility is to maintain that," Walker said.
Meeting them where they are
Clark, Raymond & Co., which ranked No. 3 on the list, joined private equity-backed Springline Advisory as a platform firm in December 2024. Based in Redmond, Washington, 16 of its 21 employees, and four of its nine partners, are women.
"What's kept me there is that willingness and understanding that we all have lives outside of an office," said Ericka Coleman, the firm's operations and HR director.
Oftentimes in this profession, she said, women are made to choose: "It's your family or your career. I think a lot of places don't think that you can have both."
While she was in school, she took a job at Clark Raymond doing billing work. Twenty-three years and two kids later, she has climbed the ladder to her current position as a non-CPA partner, made possible when the firm's founder, Ed Clark, rewrote the partnership agreement so that she could become one.
"He's big on meeting people where they're at and helping people to succeed in whatever way they want to," she said.
One ongoing issue Coleman sees in the profession for women is the gender pay gap. To solve this at her firm, she and the founder began meeting during the normal annual review and looking across the board at everybody's salaries and experience.
"We sat down and he actually made sure that there was no pay gap," she said. "And if there was, the women's salary was increased higher than the normal to bring it up to where the men in our office were at."
Coleman says the key to making women feel empowered to take advantage of the firms' policies and benefits is "making it a normal conversation."
"The women who have taken advantage of those, we speak up about it," she said. "We'll talk about it during a staff meeting or just in passing to let the younger women know that that is available."
The firm also has an open-door policy for feedback: "People can come to me at any time and let me know if something's not working or they think something else would work better," Coleman said. "And we implement those changes. The staff know that what they have to say matters."
Keeping up with the times
No. 4-ranked firm Zomma Group understands the need to change with the times to retain talent, specifically women. The Coral Gables, Florida-based team of 35 is almost two-thirds women, with three women partners out of five.
Audit partner Beatriz Martin knows what it's like to have lived through the challenges of being a woman in the profession. When she was first pregnant, one partner asked her, "You couldn't have planned this better?" She also used to be mistaken by clients as the secretary rather than the accountant.
"When I started 30 years ago, it was a different world for women in any profession. They would say, 'It's a man's world,'" she said. "As a woman myself with two kids, it was hard when they were little for me to travel as an auditor."
But having worked through those challenges herself, now she is especially equipped to create a welcoming culture for women to succeed. For instance, Martin made exceptions for one of her auditors with young children so she could continue working at the firm.
"At the time she went, 'I would love to work for you guys, but I know what an auditor job entails, and I can't travel right now,'" Martin recalled. "And I committed to her and said, 'I won't make you travel. I'll put you in jobs that are local.' I came through, and I did that for her. Her kids are now bigger, and she now enjoys traveling to get away from the house."
She emphasized the importance of personalizing the work for each person, rather than taking a blanket approach, and trust is key to that.
"You're professionals. You know what you need to do. I don't need to be micromanaging or I'm following anybody around so they get [it]," Martin said. "If you're not keeping your trust in your employees or they don't feel happy, then you know that's never going to work."
"I think you need to move with the time, so as a group, we get together and we see how things are changing," Martin added. "In order to be competitive and attract a good group of people, you have to keep up with the times. You can't stay stuck in your old mentality. It doesn't work."
'You're adults; we trust you'
No. 5 firm WBL CPAs + Advisors prioritizes evolving with their employees.
"When you are hiring people out of school, they're in one place in their life, but as they grow in their career, they may also be in a relationship, have a family, all those types of things," said Jamie Burak, director of people and culture at the firm.
The Atlanta-based firm's partner makeup is a roughly 50-50 split of men and women. With a hybrid work schedule — two days in office and three days remote — the toughest challenge is "maintaining that close-knit camaraderie," Burak said. But, "it's an adjustment to tailor your programs to fit the needs of the workforce of the time."
WBL has many examples of women utilizing the flexible work schedule, including a director of tax who rose through the ranks while working a reduced schedule because of her children and other commitments.
One way WBL offers support is by paying for childcare for those with kids below school age for up to two children. The firm also has initiatives like summer hours and offerings like a sabbatical program.
"It's hard to find good people," Burak said. "Obviously, this industry is suffering from a talent shortage, and so when you have someone who is an excellent contributor, then you want to make those allowances and accommodations so that they can have a career and a family and personal life and all those types of things."
"We really try to say to people, 'Look, you're adults. We trust you. We know that you know what needs to be done,' and with that comes this flexibility," she continued. "If, for some reason, someone is not utilizing it properly, then we address it with that individual. But that's an individual issue; we're not going to pull it away from everybody."