Meet the Chapter President: Andrew McCreary, CPA
For TSCPA Knoxville Chapter President Andrew McCreary, the journey to becoming a CPA was a natural progression. “After taking an intro accounting class, I decided to declare accounting as my major,” he says. “As I progressed through my classes and learned more about the profession, getting a master’s degree and passing the CPA Exam was something that appealed to me.” Now a senior tax accountant for Covenant Health, McCreary says, “It has been an honor to serve as the president of the Knoxville Chapter. I have gained so much from being involved in TSCPA and gotten to meet a lot of great people along the way.”
Tell us a little about yourself, your family and where you grew up.
I grew up about an hour outside of Knoxville in Rockwood, Tennessee. I attended the University of Tennessee and fell in love with Knoxville and have lived here ever since.
What do you like most about your job?
The variety of the work that I get to do and problems that I get to solve. When I first started at Covenant Health, I primarily worked on traditional tax work, Forms 990 and 1120, sales tax, property tax and payroll tax. Over the past couple of years, I have gotten to work on a variety of different projects outside of the tax space and have really enjoyed the experience. The predictability of the tax work combined with the unpredictability of these various other projects makes for a very fun work environment.
What do you like to do in your spare time?
The three primary things that I spend my spare time on are traveling with my wife, reading and attending University of Tennessee sporting events. This summer, we went to Europe for the first time and cannot wait to go overseas again. A few years ago, I set a goal to read a book a week and have been able to hold to that ever since. I typically read non-fiction, and earlier this year, I achieved my goal of reading a biography of every president. We have had season tickets to UT football and basketball for forever and make it to all the football games and most of the basketball games.
What’s the biggest challenge you’ve had to overcome, or what’s been your most significant success?
Even though I am now 10 years into my career, I still view my biggest accomplishment as passing the CPA Exam. It is one accomplishment that all the other successes in my career have been built on and is what I am still most proud of. I passed the first three sections of the exam while I was still getting my master’s, so balancing still being in school while trying to pass an exam as hard as the CPA Exam felt like a great accomplishment at the time. I took the last section of the exam the day before I started my first job, so waiting to get that score back was a little nerve-wracking just because I did not want to have to balance work with retaking the exam. Luckily, I passed, and it felt great to be able to put those letters behind my name.
What’s the best piece of advice you ever received?
In my first busy season at LBMC, when things were getting stressful, one of the partners just said, “No matter what, the work always gets done,” and I have found this to be true everywhere that I have been. With all the deadlines that we face, sometimes it just helps to take a breath and remind yourself you are capable of handling what is in front of you.
This article was originally published in the January/February 2024 Tennessee CPA Journal.