Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Champion Award 

This award recognizes an NYSSCPA individual member who demonstrates a commitment to advancing diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives. The award celebrates members who work to ensure that the NYSSCPA and the profession are positioned to attract, retain and advance all current and aspiring professionals, and who believe that a diverse, equitable and inclusive profession is one that better reflects and is better able to serve a global public of many varying perspectives and cultures.

As if it weren’t enough for Rumbi Bwerinofa-Petrozzello to become the first Black woman president of the NYSSCPA in its 125-year history, she did so just at the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic. That did nothing to thwart her plans to help to diversify the accounting profession, in which 2 percent of CPAs are Black. As a tribute to her many efforts at making the profession more welcoming to members of historically excluded communities, she is the first recipient of the NYSSCPA’s Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Champion Award.

Bwerinofa-Petrozzello stepped into her role as Society president in 2021, 100 years after John W. Cromwell Jr. became the first Black CPA in the United States. Her ascent to the position did not go unnoticed in the world beyond accounting. The New York Times published a Q&A with her in June of that year, “Why the World Needs More Black Accountants,” in which she said that DEI success would mean getting “to a point in the industry that is reflective of the society that we live in, at all levels, including making partner. People of color have been getting an education for a long time and they have been going to work for a long time, so there is no good reason why we are not seeing those people of color in positions of leadership.”

During her presidency, she devoted a great deal of her time to educating members of the profession about the need for DEI initiatives. In a speech she gave to the Accountants Club of America in October 2021 (page 2), she offered this insight: “The CPA profession is a generational one. Most current CPAs have a family member (or a friend of the family) who is or was a CPA. If one considers the historically low numbers, due in part to the barriers that certain groups have had to face, it makes sense the representative numbers are very low. The challenge to us (firms, organizations, individuals) is to bridge this gap and figure out how to create this exposure (to be the family member, so to speak).”

In an interview, Bwerinofa-Petrozzello said, “DEI, in our profession, exists with our members, outside in the professional space. DEI strategic thinking also exists on the governance end, such as the various boards that we have. Then, DEI exists within the organization; we have a DEI Committee and all of the work that the organization is doing internally. My hope and dream is that all three would be aligned [and that] one is able to see these values carried throughout everywhere that is the New York CPA space.”

“In addition to that, [we must be] able to find the opportunities to collaborate, to help to make sure that we are not repeating work that we could do together,” she continued. “All of those things are the journey that I would love to see us continue to go on to get to that nirvana space.”

Bwerinofa-Petrozzello’s career began as an auditor at Deloitte in Zimbabwe after graduating from Mount Holyoke College with degrees in economics and mathematics, while also studying for a bachelor’s degree in accounting science at the University of South Africa. Returning to the United States in 2000, she worked as an accountant for several years before becoming a certified public accountant, eventually earning certifications in forensic accounting and fraud examination. She has worked as a forensic accountant at Rock Consulting, LLC, her own firm, since 2015. The firm also focuses on “creating workplace cultures where all authentically belong, through Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion practices.”

Bwerinofa-Petrozzello joined the Society in 2012, and became the first chair of its Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) Committee in 2017. In that role, she participated in several panel discussions and other events devoted to DEI initiatives.

She is currently the head of strategy, consulting at Seramount, a strategic professional services and research firm dedicated to advancing diversity, equity and inclusion in the workplace. Previously, she directed the career-development arm of Aon’s Cyber Solutions’ Women in Cyber program, also serving as a leader in the organization’s Asian and Pacific Islander employee resource group.

Colleagues who have known her for years attested to her drive and commitment.

“When the State Society initiated a new Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Champion Award, I immediately knew Rumbi was the ideal candidate to be the first recipient of this award, as she has done everything from developing future leaders to inspiring others,” said NYSSCPA Director-at-Large Orumé A. Hays. “She has had remarkable impact on the Society and the profession, and so I nominated her for the award. I am thrilled that she has been recognized for the work she does and continues to do.”

That admiration is shared by NYSSCPA Past President Joseph M. Falbo Jr., who first met Bwerinofa-Petrozzello at the NYSSCPA’s Excellence in Financial Journalism Awards luncheon in 2014.

“I found myself seated next to Rumbi,” he said. “It was clear that she wanted to make our Society and profession better at every level, selflessly, for the greater good. She has a passion for the profession and she’s smart enough to explain DEI to people, and smart enough to have her mind changed once in a while. As passionate as she is in whatever she undertakes, she listens to people.”

In 2021, Bwerinofa-Petrozzello was invited to join Deloitte’s Making Accounting Diverse and Equitable (MADE) Working Group by Thalia Smith, a Deloitte audit and assurance partner. MADE is a commitment by the firm to invest in programs to increase racial and ethnic diversity in the accounting profession, specifically, by generating more advisory, auditing and tax career opportunities and leadership pathways for the next generation of CPAs.

“When we were creating the MADE Working Group, we wanted to pull together racially and ethnically diverse business, academic and community leaders with a vast array of experiences and who had demonstrated passion and action to advance racial and ethnic diversity in the accounting industry,” Smith said. “Rumbi was a natural choice to ask to be part of this group, given her various roles in the NYSSCPA.”

Bwerinofa-Petrozzello participated in an October 2022 MADE Leadership Summit for high school and college students. “Spending those days with the group of students emphasized to me how important this work is, because it is a reminder that some of the exclusion that has happened in our profession has had nothing to do with talent,” she said. “It has had probably everything to do with opportunity, because there are some truly motivated, talented, inspiring people that I met during the two days I was there.”

Combining her passion for DEI-related work and her experience as an auditor in her role at Seramount, Bwerinofa-Petrozzello consults for a variety of well-known companies, including many in the Fortune 500.

“Seramount and I found each other because, in the work that I do now, I am able to continue to use the skills that I have used through my accounting career, where we take data [about talent], we analyze data, we see what it is telling us, and we’re able to give recommendations, advise and work on solutions. And that is the kind of work that I have always done,” she said. “It’s all evidence-based and data driven. It also makes it more powerful.”

Looking back on her historic tenure as NYSSCPA president, she can cite many achievements. Chief among them is being able to connect with a wider range of members, including women, members of color and LGBTQ people, to make them feel more welcome in the Society.

“This is a place that is theirs as much as it is anyone else’s,” she said. “It is a place where they can be active, they can have impact, they can be influential—all of those things. I would like to think that is something that I helped happen, and I intend to continue to make it happen.”

ssteinhardt@nysscpa.org