President’s Message

This past year has been memorable for many reasons. Some of those memories are filled with fear and uncertainty, but many are centered around the opportunity to refocus and prioritize. One of my favorite experiences was the opportunity I had to spend more time with my family. We would often take the evenings and hit the trails near our house on our dirt bikes. On one such occasion, I had no particular destination in mind but to stay on the flat trails. I was playing follow the leader with my 9-yearold son. We would come to a path crossing and take the one that looked fairly flat, as he is a pretty inexperienced rider. After an hour of riding we suddenly found ourselves stuck in a large ravine filled with gigantic rocks. Instead of following the trails that lead through the fields, we had inadvertently made our way up the steep mountainside. It took us almost an hour to get ourselves out of the ravine and unstuck.

I spent a significant portion of that hour pondering how we got to where we were, and I realized that every time we came to a trail diversion, we picked the path that looked the flattest right in front of us. There was absolutely no

STACY WEIGHT, CPA

sort of thought about where the path actually went, just the path that looked the easiest. What a great lesson in the importance of planning and looking out a little further than what is right in front of you!

This year as we embark on a new five-year strategic plan for the UACPA, I can’t help but think of how critical this plan will be to moving us forward. This plan will help us further our mission of supporting and challenging members through advocacy, professional education, leadership development, networking, and community service, to help them succeed in a competitive and changing world. We have seen over the past year how quickly the entire world around us has changed.

We have also seen the need for change in many aspects of our work that is impacting our entire profession; everything from how we work — where we work, and how we go about building and maintaining relationships. This vast business disruption has led many of us to wonder how got where we are and where we go from here. It is time to take a small step back and re-evaluate our priorities to see which aspects need go back to “normal” and which things may be considered for permanent change.

I encourage each one of you to ensure you have a longterm vision of where you are going. As the world around us continues to rapidly change, a long-term view will enable you to make the right short-term decisions that will ultimately lead you to where you want to go. n