Miseen place: CalCPA Chair Andrea cope finds the recipe for success.

• Author: English, Damien B.M.
• Position: Personal account

Andrea Cope is a familiar name to many CalCPA members. After all, she's a CalCPA Board and Council member, a past president of the San Francisco Chapter and has served on various statewide and chapter committees. But even those who think they know her well may be surprised to learn that the 2009-10 CalCPA chair has:

* Been to culinary school.

* Fired herself.

* Signed Don Henley's will.

* A life-long dream to own a ranch and raise goats. That's right, goats.

And that is only the tip of the iceberg.

From Animal Science to Accounting

The daughter of an Army man. Cope's early life was marked with travel. A few years after being born in Alexandria, Va., Cope and her family briefly settled in Wyoming before landing in San Marino, near Pasadena. "It was a great place to grow up small town, 15,000 people and 450 homes," says Cope, 51.

She left San Marino following high school graduation for the University of California, Davis, where she remained for three years. Accounting, though, wasn't on her career radar. "I was going to be a veterinarian," she says. "I had a lot of fun there. In my third year, my Dad suggested maybe an animal science degree wasn't going to get me very far in this world."

That's when accounting came up as a possibility. Her dad's best friend was his CPA: Pete Sutterson of Sutterson and Co. in Encino. "Dad highly respected Pete and the whole accounting profession," Cope recalls.

Plus, she had a best friend in high school, Regina Ebert, whose mom, Nella Ebert was a CPA. "She was a stay-at-home mom, but she had her own business," says Cope. "I thought that was so cool. You can just imagine how thrilled I was in 2007 when Nella was honored as a trailblazer of the profession at CalCPA's first Women's Leadership Forum."

So, she gave Dad's advice a shot and took an accounting class. "I finally got an A," Cope says. "It was my destiny."

Cope eventually transferred to Sacramento Stale, which had a better-known accounting program than the one at Davis; graduated in 1981 with a accounting degree; and landed her first job with Windes & McClaughry in Long Beach.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

"That was my introduction to CalCPA." she says. "I was working in one of the cubes by the door and Paul Southgate, a partner, had the office across from me. We developed a good relationship and he brought me to my first CalCPA meeting."

Over the course of the next dozen years, Cope worked for various firms, including spending nearly seven years at a firm that worked with many restaurants.

However, rather than stay at the Santa Barbara-based firm and continue on the partner track, Cope decided it was time for a change and moved to Houston, where she spent six months doing contract work with the Houston Symphony as its controller.

"I had dear friends there. My brother and sister went to Texas A&M, so I had been there a million times for various reasons. I loved the place," she says. "But, I got homesick. Family and friends were still in California and I missed them all too much. I enjoyed the work at the Houston Symphony, but once the CFO and I reorganized the department I realized that I missed the variety and challenge of public accounting. I also realized that my opportunity to move up in the organization was dependent on the CFO leaving and that was fairly unlikely to happen anytime soon."

So it was back to Southern California, where she landed a job in Los Angeles with one of her former client's business, Kaufman and Eisenberg, a business management firm for high net worth movie stars and executives.

Highlights of this part of her career include signing Don Henley's will as a witness, which landed her a thank you notice on one of his albums; and meeting agent and movie producer Jay Kanter's wife, Judy, who was a bridesmaid for Grace Kelly.

Slicing and Dicing

While interesting work. Cope started to burn out.

"At the time, I was working for a known business manager in the...