CERTIFIED UNCONVENTIONAL By Marcia Tillett-Zinzow
L
auren Poppen, CPA, holds the title of CFO at The Equitable Bank in Milwaukee, but she once held the title “Fancy Pants” when she was in high school in Hampshire, Illinois. In fact, in her senior year she was voted “most individualistic” — and there is no question that the label fit. “I think I’ve just always been a little bit quirky,” she said. “In high school I liked to wear crazy patterns of pants — and the shirts I wore probably didn’t match them.” In college, she didn’t have a colorful name, but she confesses to having a lot of different colors of hair. That she’s not an artist surprises people, especially when she tells them she’s a CPA. “Maybe I just like colors!” she said. That assessment is obvious when you drive by her house in the Grasslyn Manor neighborhood of Sherman Park in Milwaukee and see a handpainted mannequin wearing a rebar hoop skirt next to the front door. And she’s working on finishing another one, which currently resides in her living room. Poppen bought the two mannequins from Boston Store when the retail chain closed in 2018. On a lunch hour, she went to the Mayfair store just to see what was on clearance and saw that the fixtures were also being sold. “My brain just went, I need to buy mannequins so I can paint them and put them in my front yard. It just seemed like it needed to be done,” she said.
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On Balance
September | October 2021
wicpa.org
