Leading lady: new chair says being a CPA is 'in the genes'.

• Author: English, Damien B.M.

CaICPA Chair Johnana Sweaney Salt hadalreadybeen up fin many hours before our scheduled 9 a.m. meeting. She spent most of lunch telling me the rigorous (some would say crazy) Crossfit exercise regiment she is enrolled in that takes place while most people are still sleeping, So, when I asked her why she decided to become a CPA, I expected her to make some comments about the discipline the job required, or the structure it provides. I was wrong. "I think it's in the genes," she says. Lessons learned: Don't judge a book by its cover--and we're all going to end up like our parents. While possibly overstated, Salt has accepted and embraced this realization whole-heartedly Much like she does with everything life has thrown at her.

Little Dutch Girl

Salt was born in what. she describes as the "eastern, central area of Holland," but, she admits, "Holland is small. You can put three Hollands in California, so when you ask me where I'm from I'd say mostly around the Amsterdam area."

Growing up in the Netherlands was fantastic, she says, which is understandable, as her family ran an all-inclusive resort. "We had acres upon acres of woodlands I would ride my bike through all day" she recalls. "We played with the guests' children on the playground, put on talent shows--it really was an ideal childhood. It came as a real shock when we came to the United States and my Dad went to work every day"

Here's where the accounting DNA comes into play. Her grandfather was a controller at an Amsterdam sugar factory, where he began working at age 15, and her father was an accountant fbr the Dutch Department of Revenue. When the family came to the United States her father became a cost accountant in the manufacturing sector of Los Angeles. Her mother got her master's degree in accounting in the Netherlands and started as a bookkeeper befbre becoming a controller for a real estate developer and for a commuter acrline.

With accounting jobs all around her, Salt took to them like a herring to pickling and has held some sort of accounting job since she was 14 years old.

'The Land of Milk and Honey'

Salt was 8 years old when she and her family left the Netherlands and settled in La Verne, which is just One town over from where Salt operates her CPA firm today in Claremont. She had an uncle and aunt who had moved here and, even as a little girl, had been trying to get her and her parents to move as well.

"Even to this day this is the land of milk and honey to them," she says.

After six months here, she was fluent in English, albeit with a New...