Carl Mayes, CPA, CAE Managing Director - Professional Practice Group, Aprio
Summary
Servant leader and change agent with a passion for audit quality. CPA Practice Advisor 40 under 40. Recognized thought leader and sought after speaker – 100+ conference presentations to date for AICPA, State Societies, and various other bodies – and contributor to AICPA and trade media on topics relative to audit quality.
Experience
Aprio
Managing Director - Professional Practice Group
July 2024 - Present (7 months)
• Build and lead a center of excellence for the Assurance Practice
• Create a harmonized assurance environment across global operations, standardizing the Aprio methodology and workpaper documentation
• Standardize EQR and Quality Control reviews in line with the above
• Create and/or oversee creation of training and working paper templates
• Project plan for implementation of new standards
• Support integration of merged-in assurance practices
AICPA 14 years Vice President
- Audit & Accounting Quality May 2023 - July 2024 (1 year 3 months) Durham, North Carolina, United States
• Assumed accountability for the $100M+ AICPA membership proposition, developing proposition strategy and increasing customer satisfaction 9% YoY
• Oversaw AICPA’s Governmental Audit Quality Center, Employee Benefit Plan Audit Quality Center and Not-for-Profit Section, with combined membership exceeding 11,000 • Led a team of 12, building a collaborative, results-driven culture while generating employee satisfaction scores 18% higher than the organizational average
• Fostered a culture of innovation, launching successful new member benefits (e.g. created and hosted A&A Focus, AICPA web series with 10,000+ monthly registrants), discontinuing underperforming products, reprioritizing content creation and driving product revenue growth (e.g. collaborated with firms to create one of AICPA’s top performing new courses) • Maintained strong relationships with key stakeholders including regulators (NASBA, Department of Labor), AICPA members and other stakeholders (State Societies) • Led AICPA response to 2023 Department of Labor Audit Quality Study and oversaw joint AICPA-NASACT research into pipeline challenges. • Represented the 200-person Public Accounting team in AICPA org design efforts – identified target audiences, defined value props and KPIs, developed problem statements and design principles, recommended design changes to CEO - Public Accounting, and led change management efforts
Senior Director - Audit & Accounting Quality February 2022 - April 2023 (1 year 3 months)
Assumed responsibility for the AICPA Not-for-Profit Section, rebuilt and redesigned the team
• Developed and executed strategy to drive NFP Section value, resulting in 6X increase in engagement •
From February 2022 to July 2024, led the A&A Business area with $7M in revenue accountability.
Developed our vision, environmental scan, performance assessment, strategic priorities, forecasts, budgets, secured executive approval and oversaw cross-functional execution. Revenue accountability principally related to AICPA A&A learning and publications portfolios – final decision-maker re: product development, continuation and retirement. Associate Director - CPA Quality and Evolution January 2019 - January 2022 (3 years 1 month) Durham, North Carolina, United States • From inception in 2017 through 2021, directed the CPA Evolution initiative, transforming the CPA licensure model to meet the needs of an evolving profession • Worked closely with AICPA and NASBA leadership to develop and implement strategy for the initiative, directing weekly collaboration sessions with the CEOs of AICPA and NASBA • Advocated for core + disciplines licensure model, secured leadership support and spearheaded a change management campaign, conducting 30+ discussion groups, surveying thousands of stakeholders and making dozens of conference presentations, resulting in overwhelming support • New CPA Exam launched on-time in January 2024 and all states where law or rule changes were required to effectuate Evolution completed those changes before launch
