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Dan Griffiths

Chief Financial Officer
Proficio Services Group
West Jordan, UT

 

Dan Griffiths never saw himself becoming an accountant. He just “wanted to understand how businesses work and decided that accounting would be a great way to achieve that objective.”

So while in college, Dan decided to apply for the accounting program. Not only did he get accepted into the program, but he also scored a summer internship at a consulting firm which gave him a “great feel for what working at a professional services firm is like.”

The next summer, he interned at a mid-sized local accounting firm in the audit department. “I continued working there for a year or so until I graduated with a B.S. and Masters in Accounting.”

From there, Dan went to work at another mid-sized local firm for a couple of years. Then an “unexpected opportunity as the CFO for a small private equity group came up and I jumped at the chance.”

Now, Dan is the CFO of a company that provides accounting, IT and consulting services to small health care businesses. “I work with a lot of health care providers,” he says. “They literally save lives. If I can help them be more successful in what they do by handling all of the things that they may not be very good at (accounting, insurance, contracts, etc), then I feel like I have really done something meaningful.”

Every day brings a new adventure, and Dan may never know what to expect. But he always makes “sure that people know that I am someone they can talk to and have confidence in. My role is all about communicating and consensus building, not sitting in a cubicle with my calculator.”

So even though Dan didn’t think his path would lead to becoming a CPA, now he knows first-hand that everything in business involves accounting. “Becoming a CPA opens lot of doors,” he says. “You can literally work anywhere as a CPA: the FBI, a recording studio, an amusement park, a hospital, a factory, a TV station.”

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