Breaking Down Barriers

BY KATHLEEN HOFFELDER, NJCPA SENIOR CONTENT EDITOR

After growing up in the inner city of Cleveland, Dr. Evelyn McDowell, CPA, CGMA, has overcome many obstacles. Now an associate professor of accounting and department chair at Rider University, Evelyn has lessons to share both inside and outside the classroom.

THE EARLY DAYS

As the second oldest of eight children, she took it upon herself to make sure her siblings were entertained — the only way an accountant knows how. “All my life I’ve been an accountant. I used to make paper money and hide it all over the house for my younger sisters and brothers to find, then I’d count it. Whoever had the highest amount would be the winner,” says Evelyn. “When I went to grocery stores, I wanted to work at the cash register. I loved that whole thing. I was mesmerized. I loved calculators. I loved the technology,” she adds.

While there was no mentor in Evelyn’s family, she did have an accounting influence at her high school when she took an accounting course. “I didn’t know anyone that had an accounting degree,” she explained, but she liked the work involved. It was also in high school where she became one of the first members of INROADS, a nonprofit organization that helps African Americans become acclimated to the business world. There she learned what it takes to make it in business — which paid off in spades. She eventually worked in public accounting, for the city of Cleveland, in internal audit for the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, internal audit for another bank and for a hospital before forming her own CPA firm.

Evelyn soon discovered she had a knack for explaining and presenting accounting to her clients and others — in short, teaching. So, she went back to school and got her Master of Accountancy and then her Doctor of Philosophy from Case Western Reserve University. Soon after, she jumped into teaching full-time. This took her from Cleveland to New Jersey, where she remains.

According to Evelyn, the most rewarding thing about teaching is helping students, especially students of color, navigate and enter the accounting profession. “I think accounting is the best profession ever on the history of the planet,” she explains. “I really like teaching intermediate accounting because that’s the foundation. If you don’t get that, then you are lost. I love having the responsibility to make sure they get it.”

COMMEMORATING THE MIDDLE PASSAGE

Evelyn also realized American slavery was something everyone, especially the youth, needed to be educated on. “Growing up in the United States of America, I could see that our country has a problem with owning up to the problems of the past and its relationship to the present. We all grow up not knowing much about the bad parts. I grew up not knowing about the magnitude and extreme barbarity of American chattel slavery and not knowing how deeply my family was affected by it,” she explains. “But, as I researched my family’s history, I could see the history from my great grandparents’ putting an ‘X’ as their signature since they couldn’t read and write, and a will with my second great grandmother (who was eight years old) being inventoried as slave property, just above the hogs and furniture.”

After researching her own history, she realized that other people could do the same and founded a hereditary society for descendants of those who were enslaved, called Sons & Daughters of the United States Middle Passage. The other part of the mission, according to Evelyn, who is the president of the organization, is to commemorate their lives. “Once we know their name, we remember who they are and what they went through and the last part is to educate their children and others about that history,” she says. As a new grandmother herself, Evelyn realizes how precious one’s history is.