Within CPABC’s community of Fellows (FCPAs), a few exceptional individuals are recognized with the Lifetime Achievement Award. This year, three outstanding FCPAs received the award. We were fortunate to chat with them to learn about what it takes to shape the profession, launch and grow a firm from two to 150-plus staff, and serve as a source of trusted governance at the highest level.
Leveraging major career pivots
Bev Briscoe, FCPA, FCA, Corporate director, PwC Canada
In a career that took her around the globe, a few experiences stand above the others for Bev Briscoe. “There were two pivotal events,” she says. “After working in the corporate sector, I had a desire to run my own company.” Bev bought a business in the transportation services sector, Hiway Refrigeration Ltd., and along with her expertise in finance, accounting, and strategy, her focus on people helped her build an enterprise that thrived. “I had a belief that if you give people the skills, tools, and motivation they need, great things will happen,” she says.
The second event occurred after Bev sold her company. “This was in early 2000, when corporate boards were being remade as a result of Enron and WorldCom. Businesses needed to redo audit committees, they needed financial experts, and they needed people with strategic executive backgrounds,” she recalls. “I became a student of good governance in crown corporations and in public companies, private companies, family companies, and not-for-profits.”
She applied her expertise to benefit multiple companies, including as a board director with Goldcorp from 2006-19 and as chair of Richie Brothers Auctioneers from 2014-20. There, she played a central role in acquisitions, digital expansion, and the transition of several C-suite positions and helped guide the company to grow from an entrepreneurial start-up to a publicly traded company with a market capitalization of $20 billion.
Along with her willingness to embrace change, her designation played an important role in her career success and Bev notes it can do the same for others. “Get a CPA ticket – you can see the world,” she says. “I worked for PwC in Australia, for a private bank in Switzerland, in logging camps in northern BC, auction sites in Dubai, and gold mines in Guatemala. I saw all that because the CPA designation has credibility and I had a value that I could bring to the organizations and enterprises I was involved in.”
Hard work and organic growth multiply success
Bill Davidson, FCPA, FCA, Founding partner, Davidson & Company LLP
“We needed a change,” says Bill Davidson about the events that led him and friend Bill McCartney, to found their own firm in 1984. “At the time, we were both working at the same firm and we decided, let’s just set up our own firm. We knew we had to pay the bills, but that’s how it started,” he notes. “It wasn’t a vision. These days, young students always ask, ‘What was your business plan?’ We didn’t have a business plan. We could pay the rent and it slowly grew from there.”
A focus on people contributed to the success at Davidson & Company, which is now a leading independent auditing and full-service business and the largest public auditor in Western Canada. “We started bringing in the right staff and it just grew and grew, very organically,” says Bill, who has expanded the company from two partners in 1984 to five in 2005 and 23 today, supported by over 150 staff. With his leadership, revenues at the firm have increased 220% in the past two decades and service lines have grown to include valuations and advisory. He has also ensured growth by focusing on clients in traditional industries such as mining, oil, and gas, as well as emerging sectors like cryptocurrency and cannabis.
Of Davidson & Company’s continued success, Bill reflects, “We kept it within the firm. We didn’t merge. It was just evolution and 40 years of hard work. Hard work always pays off, and especially when you see that organic kind of growth and trajectory – and to take it from start to finish is pretty amazing.”
Getting involved brings powerful opportunities
Dan Little, FCPA, FCA, Retired managing partner, Doane Grant Thornton LLP
While Dan Little encourages new members to engage with the CPA profession, he acknowledges that it can seem daunting. “If you’re completing the CPA program or a new member, you might feel that you’re not in the position to contribute or you might not understand how the profession works,” he notes. In order to overcome this mindset, “It’s really important for members to actively get involved, for example, through a committee, forum, or chapter. Know that you will work with an incredible group of smart people and become friends and colleagues with them. You also get to set the tone of what happens through the organization and what future members will do.”
As a CPA who started his career in the town of Duncan, Dan says that getting involved with the profession brought with it a sense of purpose and self-assurance. “As somebody coming from a smaller community, it instilled the confidence in me that I could actually be part of a profession and make decisions at that level. Not only did I get to know what was going on in the profession, but I could also bring that knowledge back to our professional staff and our clients.”
This participation evolved to numerous key contributions at the provincial and national level, including serving as president of his provincial legacy body, co-chairing the CPABC transitional steering committee to develop strategic frameworks and bylaws for the unified profession, serving as the BC & Yukon representative on the CPA Canada Board during which time he contributed to a national profession-wide governance review, and providing leadership as chair of CPA Canada’s finance, audit and risk committee. Asked about his part in unifying the profession, Dan notes, “I was really grateful to come along with an incredible group of leaders in all the legacy bodies, both volunteer leaders and the executive teams, to do something which people thought would never be possible to do.”
Celebrate and connect with CPABC’s 2024-25 Member Recognition Program honourees! Join us for the gala Member Recognition Dinner on April 2, 2025.
All photos courtesy of Kent Kallberg Studios.
