Answer: They all were raised in small farming communities, and all ended up being top financial managers in major city-based corporations that had nothing to do with farming.<\/p>\n
Here are their stories.<\/p>\n
JOHN BUCKWALTER<\/h3>\n![\"John](\"\/\/emu.edu\/now\/is\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/54\/2013\/05\/john-buckwalter-300x266.jpg\" "\\"john-buckwalter\\"")
John Buckwalter ’88<\/p><\/div>\n
John Buckwalter\u2019s father owned a small car dealership in John\u2019s hometown of Wellman, Iowa (pop. 1,100), plus another one in Washington, Iowa. \u201cMy friends at Iowa Mennonite School viewed me as a city slicker,\u201d he recalls with amusement. He wasn\u2019t, but he wanted to be.<\/p>\n
After acing the CPA exam at the end of his senior year at EMU(in the 1980s, you could get a CPA without 150 hours of coursework), Buckwalter packed everything he owned into his Chevrolet Cavalier and headed to Phoenix, where his older sister was living.<\/p>\n
He started as a roofer in the broiling summer sun of Phoenix. His sister, who was a client of the accounting firm known as Deloitte, passed his r\u00e9sum\u00e9 to the firm and, amazingly (he says, as he looks back on matters now), he was called in for an interview.<\/p>\n
Normally, a Big Four accounting firm would have finished its recruiting a year earlier and then from the so-called elite universities with undergraduate and graduate accounting programs. But one of Deloitte\u2019s young recruits for the Phoenix office backed out on his commitment to arrive in the fall, suddenly leaving an opening.<\/p>\n
Buckwalter had straight As, but his grades were from an \u201cunproven school.\u201d To the surprise of Deloitte\u2019s bigwigs, however, he had scored in the top three in Virginia on the CPA exam he took the previous May and soon would receive the Elijah Watts Sells Award, a highly prestigious national honor from the American Institute of CPAs (in 2011, it was conferred on 37 takers of the CPA exam out of 90,000 candidates).<\/p>\n
Buckwalter credits his then-EMC accounting professor,\u00a0Ronald Stoltzfus<\/strong>, for putting his students through \u201ckiller mid-terms\u201d that lasted four hours, followed by equally arduous and long final exams. With such rigorous preparation, Buckwalter did not find the CPA exam to be unduly difficult. \u201cRon certainly influenced my career,\u201d Buckwalter says.<\/p>\nBuckwalter started as a \u201cworker bee,\u201d auditing financial statements, but quickly moved to taxes. The system demanded much of its lower-level accountants. \u201cYou are trying to make a lot of people happy while doing multi-tasking. It\u2019s rough and tumble at the bottom,\u201d says Buckwalter.<\/p>\n
As one rises in the firm, you shed the number of bosses you report to, Buckwalter explains, but ultimately it is a pyramid scheme, whereby more than 95% of those originally hired will have no chance to become a partner in the firm. \u201cA lot go to beauty school,\u201d he says wryly, \u201cbut few get chosen. Would I have been chosen? That\u2019s one of the questions in my life that I\u2019ll never have an answer to.\u201d<\/p>\n
In 1998, Buckwalter got a call from a recruiter who told him that Starwood, a rapidly growing company in the hospitality space, would be interested in interviewing him.<\/p>\n
Today Buckwalter is Starwood’s vice president of corporate tax, overseeing 10 staffers and consulting with external lawyers and accountants. He estimates that he puts in 12 hours a day, 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., organizing \u201cdefense\u201d by managing IRS audits and \u201coffense\u201d by finding ways to reduce the taxes paid by Starwood.<\/p>\n
Of the $9 billion in assets held by Starwood,1<\/a><\/sup>\u00a0Buckwalter has done \u201ccreative tax planning\u201d \u2013 always within the law \u2013 to see that taxes do not have to be paid on all of the billions in asset transactions. \u201cI would never want to take a position that would be embarrassing if discovered,\u201d says Buckwalter.<\/p>\nBuckwalter smiles at the recollection that some folks in Wellman wondered why he didn\u2019t simply step into his father\u2019s car business, as his brother did. \u201cOne of the things I am most proud of is that I came out here with nothing but what I learned from my parents and the education they supported me through,\u201d he says. \u201cI have earned everything here the hard way.\u201d<\/p>\n
His father was influential, in teaching him how to handle people \u2013 by elevating them and not tearing them down, and treating customers fairly, Buckwalter says.<\/p>\n
\u201cI believe good things will come my way if I build up my team,\u201d he says. In his department, \u201cwe invest in each other and support each other,\u201d in contrast to the counter-model in some parts of Corporate America, where blame is liberally assigned and people often are torn down.<\/p>\n
Buckwalter and his wife, Pam (a former schoolteacher), have an 11-year-old daughter, Kamryn, and an 8-year-old son, Jack. The family attends Scottsdale Bible Church in the eastern suburbs of Phoenix.<\/p>\n
KERMIT KAUFFMAN<\/h3>\n![\"Kermit](\"\/\/emu.edu\/now\/is\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/54\/2013\/05\/kermit-kauffman-300x224.jpg\" "\\"kermit-kauffman\\"")
Kermit Kauffman ’79<\/p><\/div>\n
On a farm in Kalispell, Montana, grew up five Kauffman brothers. All of them headed east for a year or more at either Eastern Mennonite High School or College. N. Leroy \u201977<\/strong> was first, followed by Kermit and<\/strong> Galen<\/strong>, both \u201979 grads<\/strong>, and Marlin, class of \u201988<\/strong>. Jerry attended the high school, graduating in 1981 and eventually marrying Mary Beth Yoder, a \u201977 nursing grad<\/strong>.<\/p>\nOnly Marlin returned permanently to the family farm. Two of the brothers, Kermit and Leroy, chose financial careers, with Kermit passing the CPA exam and joining the accounting operation of Media General in Richmond, Virginia, and Leroy becoming an academic (MBA at U. of Montana, PhD at Ohio State), who now teaches accounting, finance and economics at Western Carolina University.<\/p>\n
Media General turned out to be a great place for Kermit Kauffman to go fast and far. By global standards, it was a medium-sized multi-media company controlled by the Bryan family of Virginia. From its base of two daily newspapers in Richmond, Media General acquired about 60 more newspapers. It also expanded into broadcast television, starting with WFLA-TV in Tampa, Florida, and growing to 18 TV stations, mostly in the southeast United States. In 1994, Media General embraced the Internet business, partnering first with Prodigy and then starting tbo.com, in Tampa.<\/p>\n
In 1986, seven years after joining Media General, Kauffman was named CFO of its chain of California weeklies. In 1990, Media General moved Kauffman from Anaheim, California, to Tampa, where he started as controller of The Tampa Tribune and progressed to vice president of administration, in charge of the finance and information technology functions for The Tampa Tribune, WFLA-Newschannel 8, and tbo.com, the online operation for the news outlets.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe were an industry leader with what we called convergence \u2013 online, broadcast and print operating as one,\u201d Kauffman says. \u201cWe had one finance department and one IT department, and our news and advertising people worked closely together.\u201d<\/p>\n
As anyone who has paid attention in the last decade knows, a workable financial model for delivering news in the Internet age has not yet been found. Kauffman found himself in a difficult position: \u201cIt was tough, especially in 2003 and 2004 when you could see that advertising wasn\u2019t going to bounce back.\u201d Automotive advertising was down, real estate advertising practically disappeared, and recruitment went totally to the web.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn the 90s, we had a downturn, but the economy and the advertising market came back,\u201d he says. \u201cIn the early 2000s, the problems were more systemic.\u201d Kauffman was part of implementing several rounds of layoffs at the Tribune. There was no choice \u2013 the company had to stay profitable \u2013 but the layoffs were troubling.<\/p>\n
Given the trend lines, Kauffman sold his Tribune stock and retired in 2007. \u201cI was lucky enough to have that option, but it ended up being smart to do.\u201d2<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\nNot ready to let him go, Media General asked Kauffman to work as a consultant in advance of Super Bowl XLIII, held in Tampa in 2009. Media General was a sponsor of the local host committee. Kauffman was put in charge of handling the local print and television interests for the NFL event.<\/p>\n
He chuckles at the recollection that he had 165 choice tickets to the Super Bowl in his office the weekend before the game, all destined to be used to enhance ties between Media General and its advertisers. Yet, \u201cthe best part of that gig was the fact that I was able to take one of my brothers and a nephew to the game.\u201d<\/p>\n
Outside of his paid work, Kauffman served for 15 years on the board of a Tampa shelter for victims of domestic violence. When their CFO left unexpectedly, he filled in as its interim CFO for the last nine months of 2009. He remembers the experience as particularly eye-opening regarding the tenuousness of budgets that depend on government and private grants. \u201cThere were times when I wondered if we could make payroll or cover the electric bill. But we always managed to make it happen.\u201d<\/p>\n
For fun, Kauffman and two friends formed an adult kickball league in 2010 for which they charged $65 per participant for an eight-week season plus a final tournament. When Kauffman extricated himself from this venture in January 2013, the league was attracting 600 players per season and its revenues were approaching $100,000 per year. \u201cYour biggest challenges in that business are lighted fields and enough parking,\u201d he says. (For more info, see http:\/\/kickballsociety.com\/<\/a>)<\/p>\nKauffman had other things he wanted to do with his time, like get ready for a half-marathon in New York City in March 2013. He\u2019s done 11 full marathons, including ones in Boston, Berlin, Paris and New York.<\/p>\n
John Buckwalter ’88<\/p><\/div>\n
John Buckwalter\u2019s father owned a small car dealership in John\u2019s hometown of Wellman, Iowa (pop. 1,100), plus another one in Washington, Iowa. \u201cMy friends at Iowa Mennonite School viewed me as a city slicker,\u201d he recalls with amusement. He wasn\u2019t, but he wanted to be.<\/p>\n
After acing the CPA exam at the end of his senior year at EMU(in the 1980s, you could get a CPA without 150 hours of coursework), Buckwalter packed everything he owned into his Chevrolet Cavalier and headed to Phoenix, where his older sister was living.<\/p>\n
He started as a roofer in the broiling summer sun of Phoenix. His sister, who was a client of the accounting firm known as Deloitte, passed his r\u00e9sum\u00e9 to the firm and, amazingly (he says, as he looks back on matters now), he was called in for an interview.<\/p>\n
Normally, a Big Four accounting firm would have finished its recruiting a year earlier and then from the so-called elite universities with undergraduate and graduate accounting programs. But one of Deloitte\u2019s young recruits for the Phoenix office backed out on his commitment to arrive in the fall, suddenly leaving an opening.<\/p>\n
Buckwalter had straight As, but his grades were from an \u201cunproven school.\u201d To the surprise of Deloitte\u2019s bigwigs, however, he had scored in the top three in Virginia on the CPA exam he took the previous May and soon would receive the Elijah Watts Sells Award, a highly prestigious national honor from the American Institute of CPAs (in 2011, it was conferred on 37 takers of the CPA exam out of 90,000 candidates).<\/p>\n
Buckwalter credits his then-EMC accounting professor,\u00a0Ronald Stoltzfus<\/strong>, for putting his students through \u201ckiller mid-terms\u201d that lasted four hours, followed by equally arduous and long final exams. With such rigorous preparation, Buckwalter did not find the CPA exam to be unduly difficult. \u201cRon certainly influenced my career,\u201d Buckwalter says.<\/p>\n Buckwalter started as a \u201cworker bee,\u201d auditing financial statements, but quickly moved to taxes. The system demanded much of its lower-level accountants. \u201cYou are trying to make a lot of people happy while doing multi-tasking. It\u2019s rough and tumble at the bottom,\u201d says Buckwalter.<\/p>\n As one rises in the firm, you shed the number of bosses you report to, Buckwalter explains, but ultimately it is a pyramid scheme, whereby more than 95% of those originally hired will have no chance to become a partner in the firm. \u201cA lot go to beauty school,\u201d he says wryly, \u201cbut few get chosen. Would I have been chosen? That\u2019s one of the questions in my life that I\u2019ll never have an answer to.\u201d<\/p>\n In 1998, Buckwalter got a call from a recruiter who told him that Starwood, a rapidly growing company in the hospitality space, would be interested in interviewing him.<\/p>\n Today Buckwalter is Starwood’s vice president of corporate tax, overseeing 10 staffers and consulting with external lawyers and accountants. He estimates that he puts in 12 hours a day, 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., organizing \u201cdefense\u201d by managing IRS audits and \u201coffense\u201d by finding ways to reduce the taxes paid by Starwood.<\/p>\n Of the $9 billion in assets held by Starwood,1<\/a><\/sup>\u00a0Buckwalter has done \u201ccreative tax planning\u201d \u2013 always within the law \u2013 to see that taxes do not have to be paid on all of the billions in asset transactions. \u201cI would never want to take a position that would be embarrassing if discovered,\u201d says Buckwalter.<\/p>\n Buckwalter smiles at the recollection that some folks in Wellman wondered why he didn\u2019t simply step into his father\u2019s car business, as his brother did. \u201cOne of the things I am most proud of is that I came out here with nothing but what I learned from my parents and the education they supported me through,\u201d he says. \u201cI have earned everything here the hard way.\u201d<\/p>\n His father was influential, in teaching him how to handle people \u2013 by elevating them and not tearing them down, and treating customers fairly, Buckwalter says.<\/p>\n \u201cI believe good things will come my way if I build up my team,\u201d he says. In his department, \u201cwe invest in each other and support each other,\u201d in contrast to the counter-model in some parts of Corporate America, where blame is liberally assigned and people often are torn down.<\/p>\n Buckwalter and his wife, Pam (a former schoolteacher), have an 11-year-old daughter, Kamryn, and an 8-year-old son, Jack. The family attends Scottsdale Bible Church in the eastern suburbs of Phoenix.<\/p>\n Kermit Kauffman ’79<\/p><\/div>\n On a farm in Kalispell, Montana, grew up five Kauffman brothers. All of them headed east for a year or more at either Eastern Mennonite High School or College. N. Leroy \u201977<\/strong> was first, followed by Kermit and<\/strong> Galen<\/strong>, both \u201979 grads<\/strong>, and Marlin, class of \u201988<\/strong>. Jerry attended the high school, graduating in 1981 and eventually marrying Mary Beth Yoder, a \u201977 nursing grad<\/strong>.<\/p>\n Only Marlin returned permanently to the family farm. Two of the brothers, Kermit and Leroy, chose financial careers, with Kermit passing the CPA exam and joining the accounting operation of Media General in Richmond, Virginia, and Leroy becoming an academic (MBA at U. of Montana, PhD at Ohio State), who now teaches accounting, finance and economics at Western Carolina University.<\/p>\n Media General turned out to be a great place for Kermit Kauffman to go fast and far. By global standards, it was a medium-sized multi-media company controlled by the Bryan family of Virginia. From its base of two daily newspapers in Richmond, Media General acquired about 60 more newspapers. It also expanded into broadcast television, starting with WFLA-TV in Tampa, Florida, and growing to 18 TV stations, mostly in the southeast United States. In 1994, Media General embraced the Internet business, partnering first with Prodigy and then starting tbo.com, in Tampa.<\/p>\n In 1986, seven years after joining Media General, Kauffman was named CFO of its chain of California weeklies. In 1990, Media General moved Kauffman from Anaheim, California, to Tampa, where he started as controller of The Tampa Tribune and progressed to vice president of administration, in charge of the finance and information technology functions for The Tampa Tribune, WFLA-Newschannel 8, and tbo.com, the online operation for the news outlets.<\/p>\n \u201cWe were an industry leader with what we called convergence \u2013 online, broadcast and print operating as one,\u201d Kauffman says. \u201cWe had one finance department and one IT department, and our news and advertising people worked closely together.\u201d<\/p>\n As anyone who has paid attention in the last decade knows, a workable financial model for delivering news in the Internet age has not yet been found. Kauffman found himself in a difficult position: \u201cIt was tough, especially in 2003 and 2004 when you could see that advertising wasn\u2019t going to bounce back.\u201d Automotive advertising was down, real estate advertising practically disappeared, and recruitment went totally to the web.<\/p>\n \u201cIn the 90s, we had a downturn, but the economy and the advertising market came back,\u201d he says. \u201cIn the early 2000s, the problems were more systemic.\u201d Kauffman was part of implementing several rounds of layoffs at the Tribune. There was no choice \u2013 the company had to stay profitable \u2013 but the layoffs were troubling.<\/p>\n Given the trend lines, Kauffman sold his Tribune stock and retired in 2007. \u201cI was lucky enough to have that option, but it ended up being smart to do.\u201d2<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n Not ready to let him go, Media General asked Kauffman to work as a consultant in advance of Super Bowl XLIII, held in Tampa in 2009. Media General was a sponsor of the local host committee. Kauffman was put in charge of handling the local print and television interests for the NFL event.<\/p>\n He chuckles at the recollection that he had 165 choice tickets to the Super Bowl in his office the weekend before the game, all destined to be used to enhance ties between Media General and its advertisers. Yet, \u201cthe best part of that gig was the fact that I was able to take one of my brothers and a nephew to the game.\u201d<\/p>\n Outside of his paid work, Kauffman served for 15 years on the board of a Tampa shelter for victims of domestic violence. When their CFO left unexpectedly, he filled in as its interim CFO for the last nine months of 2009. He remembers the experience as particularly eye-opening regarding the tenuousness of budgets that depend on government and private grants. \u201cThere were times when I wondered if we could make payroll or cover the electric bill. But we always managed to make it happen.\u201d<\/p>\n For fun, Kauffman and two friends formed an adult kickball league in 2010 for which they charged $65 per participant for an eight-week season plus a final tournament. When Kauffman extricated himself from this venture in January 2013, the league was attracting 600 players per season and its revenues were approaching $100,000 per year. \u201cYour biggest challenges in that business are lighted fields and enough parking,\u201d he says. (For more info, see http:\/\/kickballsociety.com\/<\/a>)<\/p>\n Kauffman had other things he wanted to do with his time, like get ready for a half-marathon in New York City in March 2013. He\u2019s done 11 full marathons, including ones in Boston, Berlin, Paris and New York.<\/p>\nKERMIT KAUFFMAN<\/h3>\n
![\"Keith](\"\/\/emu.edu\/now\/is\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/54\/2013\/05\/keith-yoder-300x220.jpg\" "\\"keith-yoder\\"")