Debra Turner says it all comes down to having a clear vision of who you are and what you want to do.
Inspired by a basic bookkeeping course while still in high school, the Charleston native never had any doubt that she wanted to be in accounting – and never mind that the profession is still a largely male-dominated field. “My parents always told me I could do anything I wanted to do and I believed them,” Turner explains.
“So going into public accounting wasn’t about who was or was not there; it was just about the work, and about the kind of work I wanted to do,” she says, “I never thought seriously of doing anything else.”
That passion and determination was repaid in full on January 1, when Turner officially became managing partner of WebsterRogers, LLP, the Florence-based certified public accountancy that maintains offices in Columbia, Sumter, Georgetown, Myrtle Beach, Litchfield, Summerville and Charleston.
Not only is she the rare female managing partner in a public accountancy, but she is also only the second managing partner the 27-year-old firm has ever had, succeeding founder Victor C. Webster, who will now serve as a consultant to the practice.
While many of us turn to accountants once a year to aid in our tax preparation, the hallmark of public accounting is that practitioners are certified, licensed and specifically trained to serve the attest function.
“It’s about audits and review, the compilation of financial statements and being able to express opinions on those financial statements,” Turner says.
“We in public accountancy have training and additional skills that are valuable to businesses in other ways,” she says. These additional skill sets encompass everything from management consultation, business valuations, forensic and investigative accounting, and expertise in other niche accounting areas.
Turner was introduced to these distinctions while attending the College of Charleston, where she also had the good fortune of having a professor who was an advocate for women in the industry and who was also very much involved with matching promising students with local firms.
“This was a long time ago,” Turner laughs.
But the relationship almost immediately bore fruit when Turner was hired by the very first firm she interviewed with. Two years later, she started her own practice, and three years after that, she merged her firm with Humphries & Co., where she worked for 16 years and held the title of partner. Humphries & Co. merged with WebsterRogers in 2000.
Turner points out that public accountants need to be able to step back and consider the “big picture” when solving problems for clients and helping people manage their business. “In that respect, critical thinking is very important,” she says. “You have to question assumptions. You can’t just accept what people are giving you on the face of it. So it’s very challenging, and when you’re working with clients, of course, there’s something different every day.”
As managing partner, Turner now oversees a staff of 130, many of whom joined WebsterRogers, as she did, through a merger. As a result, each of the eight offices has many long-time clients and expertise honed to suit their market and client base.
“Because many of our offices were once free-standing businesses, they are accustomed to operating relatively independently; however several of our services, like employee benefit plan administration and health care consulting, are company-wide and based in Florence,” she says.
When Turner reflects on her career, she says one of the things that have amazed her is the enormous variety of ideas that people turn into new businesses and how a small idea can turn into a very large business. That reality has lead WebsterRogers to expand its service offerings to meet changing needs and changing business dynamics. At the same time, the technological revolution of the past two decades has made it much easier to automate routine procedures. “That’s allowed us to spend more of our time on higher level consulting and things that require a brain, and that gives us the ability to provide better value to our clients,” Turner says.
With that, Turner turns her attention to a subject near and dear to her heart: the role of women in public accountancy. “For many years, probably as much as 55 percent of college graduates in accounting were female, and so on the entry level of the profession, there are slightly more women then men,” she says. “But what you see in public accountancy, is that as people begin to advance in their careers, the number of women that rise to higher levels begins to decline. By the time you get to the partner level, the percentage of women drops to between 10 and 15 percent.
“Now, there are a lot of reasons for that,” she continues. “It’s a fairly stressful profession, it can require long hours, and many women leave the profession to raise a family. Now, that’s fine, but if given the opportunity, we know many women would like to do both: have a family and a fulfilling career.”
Turner says in response to this reality, WebsterRogers and other firms have tried to find ways to help women meet their personal goals while still playing a significant role at their firms.
“We want to encourage women to stay in the profession longer if they want to, and I’m proud to say we’ve done a good job of that, our firm being 30 percent female,” she says.
One way the company has done that is by offering employees flexible schedules; others have been given the option of scaling back their hours.
Going Forward
In preparing to take the reigns of the firm, Turner says she looked to founder Victor Webster as a mentor, one of two she’s had over the course of her career.
“I think the main thing about the people I’ve viewed as mentors is they both gave me confidence in my abilities,” she says. “You always think, ‘Am I right about this or not?’ But my mentors have been very supportive of my developing confidence in my decision skills.”
“He (Webster) has been a visionary in developing what this firm was going to be about,” she says. “He started in Florence in a small office with just a few people, and recognized from the way the business was developing that in order to be successful we needed to expand our services and have a larger geographic footprint. He’s lead us down that road very successfully.
“Taking over from him is, of course, very intimidating, but he and everybody else here has been very supportive of me coming in,” she continues, mentioning that Webster has very firmly said he will not be involved in the business on a day-to-day business, and also that he understands that as time goes on, change will be inevitable.
“Of course, it will be impossible for things not to change, but I truly believe we are on a very good track and I certainly have no intention of changing the direction that the firm is going in,” Turner says. “We are on a track that we all agree we want to go down, and Mr. Webster has been very good about updating things over the years, so it’s not like there are any imminent reasons to make changes in what we do and how we do it.”