Jacob Hillegas

I began my career as a CPA (GAAP auditor), but after my wife and I welcomed our first daughter and were expecting our second, I realized that the work/life balance of a CPA wasn't what I wanted for my family or for myself. I began to look for opportunities to make the jump into private accounting, and news of my interest traveled through three degrees of business network connections to reach Keith Flaherty's attention. After news of Hallam's controller search made its way back to me, I did some research and decided I liked what I heard and saw about employee ownership and the culture here, and the rest is history!

Now that I've been here about nine months, I've gotten to experience that culture firsthand. My family has certainly benefited from far more nights and weekends at home, and I can lead a more active lifestyle myself. I successfully trained for my first half marathon over the winter, by using the stability of my work schedule to build a lunch break running routine. During a few weeks in early spring, we even had an informal Hallam running club when we had several teams training for the VT Corporate Cup 5K. Once summer hit, I was also thrilled to join the weekly ultimate frisbee games.

Sometimes the perception of working in private accounting is oversimplified as "boring" compared to the high-intensity workload of CPAs, but at Hallam I've experienced a good mix of routine and development. And with a well-rounded list of identified development projects on the horizon, I don't foresee boredom being a concern any time soon!