should go into teaching?’” said Paulson, “That floored me at the time and I just dug in my heels and thought this is what I want to do and I’m doing it.” Things weren’t a whole lot different after graduation. “When I got a job they didn’t quite know what to do with a woman CPA and I was young. There were people that didn’t, even 12 or 13 years ago, want a woman to be their main CPA. But after a while I established myself.” In 1998 Paulson decided to start her own business. “I had done several things in between. I had worked as a corporate controller and worked at (then) Universal Pensions in the pension field so I had a pretty good background … but I always wanted to get back to public accounting and I always wanted to have my own firm. I’ve loved it. It’s one of those things where you think, ‘“Why didn’t I do this sooner?’” In the beginning she worked out of her home. Then she moved into a one-room office, then a two-room office. For the past two and a half years the accounting firm has been located on Edgewood Drive in Baxter. Today Carole Paulson Accounting employs four people. Carole, her partner, Jill Brodmarkle, a bookkeeper and an administrative staff person. She is involved in Toastmasters and several organizations in the community, including Sertoma. Paulson also sits on the boards for the Crisis Line and PORT. “Jill and I really like to give back to the community,” says Paulson. “We do a lot of things for the nonprofits.” It gets busy for the company this time of year, tax preparation and planning. “The laws are forever changing,” she says, “If you do one or two tax returns a year you just can’t really keep up. If you have anything at all complex besides a W-2 and itemized deductions it gets complicated.” The firm handles payroll for a number of local companies and offers QuickBooks consulting. Since those days at SCSU, Paulson said big changes have definitely happened in the accounting field. For one thing accounting is no longer an odd choice for women. “It’s definitely changed,” says Paulson. “There are probably now more women than men in the field. I had a man come to me a while ago who was looking for a woman CPA.”
Other big changes in the accounting process can be credited to computers. “Things are very fast now and we can directly download so much information. You have to learn new things all the time,” she says. Carole also notes that software like QuickBooks changes how they do business. “We used to do everything by hand. Now a lot of clients do things for themselves and then we look them over.” Government regulations she says, adds to their workload. “There are so many government regulations and timing considerations now that clients want to make sure it’s right and done on time. Thinking back nostalgically, Carole says, “I remember the time we wrote everything on forms and had to erase if we made a mistake.” Away from the office, Carole likes to walk, read, knit and crochet. “I make a lot of scarves,” she says. She also loves spending time with her family. She has two sons, a daughter, a step-daughter and ten grandchildren than range in age from 2 to 19. She might be in a completely different career today if she had listened to other people in the early years. Instead, she did things her way — and when she goes into work in the morning, her name is on the sign out front to prove it.
HV
Sheila Helmberger Sheila Helmberger is a free-lance writer and contributes to a variety of area publications.
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