Vaden Wears Many Hats at EY

With a father who was an accountant, there was probably a certain expectation that David Vaden would grow up with a love for numbers.

An accounting class he took in high school confirmed as much.

“It introduced me to looking at accounting as a puzzle, and as long as you have the pieces, you can put it together,” he said. “And I really enjoyed that facet of it.”

During a recent interview from his fifth-floor office in the Pinnacle Hills Tower 1 building in Rogers, Vaden, 42, reflected on how his career has unfolded, working for one of the “big four” accounting firms — Ernst & Young LLP, which formally launched its “EY” brand identity two years ago.

“A goal I have for myself is to be well rounded and make sure I am more than just a tax return to a client,” he said. “If you had told me this [career] was just going to be doing tax returns for 30 years, I probably wouldn’t have done it. I want to make sure I am thinking of all aspects, and not just tax concerns. I enjoy working with our clients, and enjoy being an extension of their team. That is how I view this role.”

Vaden, a native Arkansan and a 20-year EY veteran, was promoted to the Rogers office managing partner in January 2014. In that role, he oversees about 35 employees who work with clients across all of the firm’s four major services lines — audit, tax, advisory and transaction services.

He also serves clients — mainly in the retail and consumer products sectors — as a partner in the firm’s tax practice.

In addition to those roles, he also represents the firm working with retailers across the country to address tax implications involving the retail industry.

EY, a global, 212,000-employee accounting firm with nearly $29 billion in revenue, is the only company Vaden has ever worked for. The firm at one time also had offices in Little Rock and Fort Smith, but its only location in the state now is in the Pinnacle Hills area of Rogers, a strategic decision made in 2005 to better serve the company’s sizable public company portfolio. EY is the outside accountant of record for three public companies headquartered in the area — Wal-Mart Stores Inc., J.B. Hunt Transport Services Inc. and ArcBest Corp.

In addition to the public companies, EY also works on behalf of a number of mid-sized companies — defined generally as companies ranging in revenue from $20 million to $500 million — and Vaden said one of his goals as managing partner is to expand that business.

“David is a consummate professional and has an outstanding reputation as a tax adviser, serving both global and domestic clients in the state,” Randy Cain, managing partner of the southwest region of EY, said at the time of Vaden’s promotion. “David is very focused on understanding the client’s business needs and aligning the right resources and technical abilities to bring value to his clients. We are pleased to have him now leading our office in Northwest Arkansas.”

 

A Serious Student

Vaden, who grew up in the central Arkansas town of Bryant, had five brothers and sisters. The oldest, his sister, Pennie, also became an accountant.

He chose the University of Arkansas for college, where a career involving numbers was further confirmed. Vaden enrolled in the Sam M. Walton College of Business and took the basic accounting classes.

Under the mentorship of distinguished faculty leaders that included James Modisette, Doris Cook — noted for being the first female CPA in the state, the first female full-time professor in the accounting department and the first woman to join the Arkansas Society of CPAs — and Charles Leflar, Vaden said pursuing an accounting career clicked.

Leflar, a clinical professor at the UA since 1992 with a Ph.D. in accounting, recalled Vaden as a serious student.

“That’s professor-speak for the kind of student we like,” he explained. “He was interested in the work. His goal was to learn as much as he could so that he could prepare himself for the profession. He didn’t do the minimum just so he could get a good grade. He was more focused on his learning and development.”

Aside from the college experience, Vaden also gained real-world practice with a pair of internships — with Walmart as a junior and with BKD LLP as a senior.

He worked with the tax group at Walmart and the audit group at BKD. Being able to see both sides, he said, helped him determine what he wanted to do long term.

“The tax side appealed to me,” he said. “I’m not your typical accountant in that I am not as detail oriented as other accountants are, and tax allows you a bit more flexibility in that area.”

Vaden said the value of interning while in college was “phenomenal,” and he advocates the experience to up-and-comers in the industry, whether it’s with an accounting firm or a company.

“Most people have only had part-time jobs up to that point in their lives, so if you do the true internship and are immersed in the business and working 8 to 5, you get a sense of what you’re going to be doing the next 30 years,” he explained. “It helps you understand how you work in teams, how to work toward a common goal.

“Internships let you practice what you have learned out of a book, and it can solidify your decision that you have chosen the right career path.”

 

The Right Stuff

A key benefit of internships is getting a head start on building an invaluable network of connections. It’s partly responsible for guiding Vaden to EY.

Upon graduating, Vaden was recruited to join Walmart full time in its tax group. But, instead, he thought public accounting would be a better fit. The person who was courting Vaden to Walmart, Wyman Atwell, then connected Vaden with a former colleague of his, Henry E. (Hank) Neely, who was a senior manager at EY’s office in Little Rock. Both men had previously worked together in Oklahoma City for public accounting firm Arthur Andersen.

At the end of an hour-long interview, Vaden was offered a job. That was in 1996, and he worked from the firm’s Little Rock office for a decade. Vaden highlighted the support of Neely and Dick Muse for providing the building blocks to acquire the broad-based experience necessary to serve a variety of clients in different industries.

“Those guys took me out to [meet with] clients,” Vaden recalled. “A lot of tax folks, even to this day, they’ll get hired and be put in a back room to crank out tax returns. With those guys, there was more to it than that. I would be sitting at my desk some days and they would come in and say, ‘Grab your coat. We’re going out to a client.’ Now, I didn’t always have a meaningful role in those discussions, but I was seeing the interaction, how they worked with clients, how they did conflict resolution. I got to see the soft skills of the business early on and that really motivated me.”

Neely, now a partner in EY’s southwest region office based in Dallas, recalled Atwell’s impression of Vaden before meeting him for an interview.

“He told me David had the right stuff to be successful in the world of ‘big four’ accounting, and it didn’t take me long to draw the same conclusion,” Neely said. “He has a calm confidence about him that is very effective in complex problem solving and high-stress situations.”

Neely said the phrase “still waters run deep” comes to mind when he thinks of Vaden.

“He has a very calm demeanor, but he’s a very profound and passionate professional.”

 

Everyone Has a Voice

During his 20 years in the accounting industry, Vaden has seen a lot of change.

The Sarbanes-Oxley Act, Congress’ reaction to corporate accounting scandals, was a significant one in 2002, requiring audit partners to rotate among clients more often.

The Affordable Care Act in 2010 was another because it affected so many different areas of a business, Vaden said.

But through the ups and downs, Vaden said EY has strived to do a better job of recognizing the value of its people. The firm’s employees develop many sought-after skills, so Vaden remains attentive to recruiting and retaining great talent through diversity and inclusiveness.

“A lot of times those two words get used interchangeably, and that is definitely not my view,” he said. “It’s easy to put together a diverse team, but it’s a lot harder to make sure it’s an inclusive environment for them to operate efficiently in.

“We want to make sure everybody’s view and opinions are respected, and that everyone has a voice. It’s really not about hierarchy and titles. It’s about one team. We all have a different role and a different perspective, so it creates an environment to let people share those perspectives. You get a much better outcome and it’s a sign of a successful personal services firm.”