Our Rochester Chapter has a regularly scheduled interview on WROCTV, the local CBS station, which airs every Monday morning around 6:15 a.m. During these segments, one of the anchors will interview one of our chapter members on a range of accounting, finance and tax topics. Since we are in the middle of tax season, our chapter has been focusing on tax tips for individuals to use when planning and preparing their personal income tax returns. These interviews are a great opportunity for our members to share useful tax topics with the Rochester community. As one of the members who has participated in these interviews, I have found the response to be overwhelmingly positive. It is great to hear from a wide range of people that they saw the interview on TV and picked up a tip or two.

Both Alonza Robertson and Maya Lindsay at the NYSSCPA have done a wonderful job suggesting potential topics and coordinating the interviews with our members and WROC-TV. Their dedication to bringing useful content and involving a number of our chapter members in the interviews has helped our chapter to keep this segment on air every Monday morning. While we have a stable of media-trained members to represent the Rochester Chapter on WROC-TV every week, we are always looking for more. If you are a member of the Rochester Chapter and would like the NYSSCPA media relations team to help you be more media savvy, build your personal brand and share your expertise with your fellow Rochesterians, contact Alonza at arobertson@nysscpa.org.

In other chapter news, Immediate Past President Antoinette Spina is leading the Career Opportunities in the Accounting Profession (COAP) Committee. The committee has already met several times and is currently recruiting local high schools students to this year’s program, scheduled for June 26– 29 at the Rochester Institute of Technology. The program is free and is aimed at fulfilling COAP’s mission of creating a more racially diverse profession. We look forward to showing these students the variety of opportunities that come with an accounting career.

Our Education Committee, led by Michelle Staebell, CPA, has scheduled the Outstanding Accounting Student Award Night for April 21 at Midvale Country Club. The guest speaker for the event is Uma Gupta. Uma has more than two decades of knowledge, expertise and experiences in key educational issues that are shaping the future of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Management) in America today. I look forward to her speech and the awards to the outstanding accounting students from our Greater Rochester area colleges and universities.

Matt Taylor and the NextGen Committee are working on the NextGen golf tournament coming up this spring. Mark Forte and other members are working on the 16th annual Counselor’s Cup Golf Challenge, scheduled for June 14 at Bristol Harbour. The Counselor’s Cup Golf Challenge is a networking event designed for professionals that give direct counsel to individuals, including accountants, lawyers and bankers. This all-day event includes golf, breakfast, lunch, dinner and some great door prizes.

I hope to see a strong turnout from our chapter at these upcoming events. If you are interested in attending any of these events, our chapter’s web page on the NYSSCPA web site has additional details about the events. If you have not attended any of our events in the past and would like to be introduced in advance to someone who plans to attend, please reach out to me and I can connect you with one of our board members, who will be at the event that interests you.

mbryant@pharmasmart.com