One CPA’s ultimate career journey
Shaheen Kassam shares what it means to be an influencer of change
“It’s been an interesting career journey for me,” Shaheen Kassam CPA, CMA shares. “The business acumen gained from completing my CPA has been the piece that has allowed me to kick off conversations at companies with everyone working on the front lines right up to the CEO.”
That business acumen has eventually led Shaheen to establish her own consulting firm where her designation continues to provide value every day.
But what, exactly, do consultants do? First of all, Shaheen says, it depends on what kind of consultant you are. In today’s workforce, consultants are used in a multitude of ways. Typically, they are brought in by an organization to provide a strategic pathway—to answer questions such as, “How do we get where we want to be?”
In some cases, consulting means developing a plan for the company to execute themselves, and sometimes it can mean both creating and implementing the plan. Ultimately, what a consultant does depends on the organization that has hired them and what their needs are at that moment.
Through her work in several different business areas, Shaheen has always seemed to find her way back to change management, which has become even more essential in today’s ever-changing work world.
Shaheen believes change management is about looking at the people side of change. As a change manager, she sees her role as guiding the people within an organization so they can adopt whatever change is required for the organization to reach the future desired outcome. “You can’t be the one person who influences change,.” she says. “You have to have people beside you influencing change collaboratively.”
Of course, change management differs depending on the company and their definition of it, and no two companies approach the process of change management in the same way. “You have to understand the nuances that are within each organization to determine how to move them from their current state to where the organization wants to end up,” Says Shaheen.
It’s no surprise, then, that change has been constant in Shaheen’s career as she has been open to the possibility that every new experience offers something she can add to her career toolkit. She has embraced this philosophy of exploration in her career as she recognizes that you never really know where an experience can take you.