With his appointment to Chief Operating Officer of HBK CPAs & Consultants, Pittsburgh’s Jeremy Hartzell is adding another chapter to a truly American story. Raised in the tiny community of Linesville, Pa., Jeremy grew up in a family who often had to rely on food stamps, unemployment checks, and, as he recalls, “government cheese” to feed themselves. But if those days were challenging, they would not hold him hostage, as Hartzell’s story is one of ambition, determination, and achievement, culminating in his appointment to the position of Chief Operating Officer of one of the nation’s largest accounting firms.
Hartzell’s emergence from “humble beginnings” began when his academic accomplishments in high school earned him a scholarship to Duquesne University. There, among many noteworthy achievements he served on the President’s Advisory Committee, served as president of the Integrated Honors Society and was the first recipient of the Honors College Leadership award. Hartzell remained at Duquesne after earning his B.S.B.A. for both a Masters in Business Administration (MBA) and Doctorate of Law (JD), completing all three degrees in just seven years.
As HBK’s COO, Jeremy and newly appointed Managing Partner and CEO Tom Angelo will oversee a 75-year-old financial services business that today ranks as the 46th largest U.S. accounting firm according to the latest Accounting Today magazine survey. The two will be in charge of continuing a remarkable record of growth, especially noteworthy in recent years amidst the dramatic changes reshaping the accounting industry, changes that require huge investments in operations, including personnel and the technology needed to remain relevant to our clients and prospective clients in this digital era.
“Our clients, primarily small and midsized businesses and their owners, require more from us than the traditional compliance services,” Jeremy said. “Tax and audit services are of course still vital for any business. But they also need more consultative support, innovative solutions that extend to operations and technology, even areas like human resources and marketing. HBK today is teams of professionals in multiple disciplines providing holistic services and support delivered by knowledgeable, experienced, dedicated industry experts. As we expand our geographical footprint, my role is to continue to build on that model and ensure that we provide that value and do it in a way that makes it easy for people to do business with us.”
Internally, a focus of Jeremy as COO is already underway.
One of my objectives is to be accessible to team members, including having a presence in our offices communicating with our people. Communication is vital for us to operate as one firm, working together in a unified and coordinated manner, which I believe is essential for achieving common goals.
“One of the big things we’re going to roll out in the first 12 months is centralization of some processes, tax returns and eventually financial statements and more processes that could benefit by centralization, like billing. We’re looking at how we can move a lot of our administrative processes that right now are done in 17 different locations—and in some cases, 17 different ways—into a much smaller number of locations to provide more streamlined and efficient procedures. We’ve already started moving into the Solutions groups and their administrative processes.
“We also want more consistency in our hiring and in our service lines, a onefirm approach while still maintaining the level of personalization we have as local service providers that is so important to our clients and vital to our success.
“The process and procedures will evolve. The industry is constantly evolving, and as things change we want to be nimble, able to adjust rapidly and stay ahead and have all the tools we need so we can respond to change as it occurs.
“A key component of change is a different version of accountability, from a local to a corporate structure. There are certain ways to do things, one strategy, one vision, and all of us following that.
We’re going to move forward with a central vision, this is how we’re going to operate, and that will give us the opportunity to drive our business forward as one brand, one firm. There is tremendous value in that. It is our new corporate model and we all will be accountable for living up to it.
“We’re already seeing more of this in the firm. You’re going to have a team that includes people in Pittsburgh, Florida, and Ohio, teams that include more than CPAs, such as technology and business operations experts. That spells a lot of opportunity for team members, chances to advance their careers in ways they haven’t had before.
“We still want to think entrepreneurially. We will continue to give local offices the leeway to make decisions on a lot of things and encourage our characteristic entrepreneurism, to give clients the comfort of that local office feel. We’ll just do some things firm-wide to make us stronger and better suited for more growth.”