Bonus | CMA 50th Anniversary: Continuing to Attract the Best and the Brightest

In this special podcast celebrating 50 years of the CMA
(Certified Management Accountant) program, Margaret Michaels,
IMA’s Brand Content and Storytelling Manager will be talking with
two CMAs, one who earned his CMA in 1975 soon after the CMA
program had just begun, and another who earned her CMA quite
recently in April 2022. 


Connect with our Speakers:
John Macaulay: https://www.linkedin.com/in/johncmacaulay/ 


Colleen Lucero: https://www.linkedin.com/in/colleen-lucero/


Full Episode Transcript:


[00:00:00]       < Intro
>


 


Margaret:       So in this
special podcast, Celebrating 50 Years of the CMA, or the
Certified Management Accountant program. Margaret Michaels,
myself, IMA's Brand Content and Storytelling Manager, will be
talking with two CMAs. One who earned his CMA in 1975, soon after
the CMA program had just begun. And another who earned her CMA
quite recently, in April of 2022. 


 


John Macaulay is a former IMA chair, who was among the first CMA
program completers. He held a number of distinguished roles in
the industry. Including serving as CFO of the telecom company,
Royal Street Communications. 


 


Colleen Lucero is a Manager of Client Analytics at Graebel, a
relocation services company. Colleen earned her CMA in April of
2022. I am so pleased we could chat, today, with both John and
Colleen about their CMA experiences and career journeys. 


 


[00:01:15]       < Music
>


 


Margaret:       So, John,
I'll start with you. I noticed in your bio that you did not study
accounting as undergraduate major. Rather you pursued a biology
and chemistry degree. What made you decide to shift into
accounting, and how did you hear about the CMA program?


 


John:           
  Thank you, Margaret. It's good to be here today and chat
with everyone. That's a rather complicated story, but I will try
to shorten it up as best I can. I graduated from college in 1965,
with a degree in biology and chemistry. I was studying
pre-med. 


 


I had pretty much decided, by the end of my junior year, that I
probably didn't want to spend another six years in school. And,
so, I decided I wasn't going to medical school. 


 


1965 was the middle of Vietnam. And, so, I signed up for Navy
Officer Candidate School and I went and became a Navy officer. A
guided-missile officer on a couple of different destroyers. And
it was a great experience and exposure, for me, to not only
international travel and different cultures, but also to
leadership and the military. 


 


When I got out of the military, I knew I wanted to go to graduate
school and get an MBA. I hadn't settled on accounting at that
point, clearly, but I knew I was headed in the direction of
business. I had worked at a bank, in Cambridge, and I actually
became the head of personnel. I was there for only a year and a
half, actually, and after about six months, I became the head of
personnel, we had 650 employees and 12 branches. 


 


So it was a rather challenging decision to go back to graduate
school. But I was accepted by Northwestern, the Kellogg School,
and we moved from Boston, by that time I was married, from Boston
to Chicago, and spent two years at Kellogg getting an MBA. And
there I specialized in accounting and finance, Accounting, and
Information Systems. 


 


The second year, I became the assistant to the chair of the
Accounting and Information Systems Department. And did some
tutoring and wrote a couple of cases for him.


 


From there, I went to work for General Mills in Minneapolis, and
this was 1972, I started working in May. And in about September,
my boss, two levels up, whose name was Jerry Ford, came around
and said, "John, would you be interested in taking the CMA?"


 


Well, I had actually refused, at Kellogg, to take the CPA exam,
and I'd interviewed with some of the big, I guess it was the Big
Six at that point, it may have been Big Eight still. And I told
them I was willing to go into consulting, but I didn't want to be
an auditor. 


 


I had no interest in the CPA. And, so, they didn't accept me, but
I had plenty of opportunities. And, so, I said to Jerry, "Sure I
would. I'd absolutely love it." But I said I wanted a
certification and I didn't want to be a CPA. I wanted to be a
management accountant in business.


 


So Jerry said, "Well, this organization, called NAA, is going to
have this exam." And Susan's grandfather was actually a member of
NAA and had been the president of the Boston Chapter many years
ago. And I said, "Well, that's perfect." 


 


And, so, we began to try to get ready for this exam, which we
knew nothing about. And we held one or two, "Study sessions" in
our headquarters, in Minneapolis. But we didn't have any real
success because it was just a reading list. Some of the books I'd
had in graduate school. 


 


So, anyway, we went, it was a two-and-a-half-day exam at the
University of Minnesota. And I listened to part of the previous
podcast and Denny Beresford talked about the ice storm in
Pittsburgh. Well, the second day we had a blizzard in
Minneapolis, we actually lost the power. It was in the library at
the University of Minnesota. 


 


We actually lost the power, but there were plenty of windows. So
we had a lot of light, and we just continued writing the exam, so
it wasn't really an issue. I was fortunate, I did pass all five
parts of the first exam. 


 


So I say I got it in 1972, but IMA decided I didn't have, "Enough
management experience" at that point, and, so, they wouldn't give
me the certificate. So I actually got my certificate later in the
second batch of certificates. 


 


But that's fine, I didn't have a problem because I actually wrote
them a letter and said, "Well, I think I have the experience and
this and that." And next thing I knew they wanted me to be on an
exam review committee. And, so, that's actually how I got
involved with leadership in IMA, which I'll talk about a little
bit later.


 


Margaret:       That's a
great story. It seems everyone, in the first class of CMA takers,
had unfavorable weather conditions. To add to the challenge in
taking the test for the first time. 


 


And Colleen, like John, your undergraduate degree is not in
accounting, but in Spanish Language and Literature. So what
prompted you to embark on an accounting career, and how did you
hear about the CMA program?


 


Colleen:          Yes,
so I got my undergrad in Spanish and I thought I was going to do
interpreting and translating. So after I graduated from my
undergrad, I started down that road and then realized that it
ended up not being quite the fit that I was hoping it was going
to be. But I was getting other certifications for interpreting
and translating for large conferences, and even in the courts,
and some medical stuff. 


 


And while I'm doing all this, on the side I got this, what I
thought was a transitory side job with a small business. And I
ende...