For decades, finance professionals could expect to build successful careers by developing expertise within a company and steadily expanding their responsibilities through promotions. While those fundamentals remain important, modern finance professionals and leaders face a different reality, with career durability now reliant on adaptability, judgment and transferable skills, rather than mere tenure.
The profession continues to evolve through new technologies, changing business models, shifting workforce expectations and increasing pressure to deliver strategic insight alongside traditional financial stewardship. Few careers illustrate that evolution better than Donnita Nicholas’.
As a long-time consultant within Cherry Bekaert's Recruiting & Staffing practice (formerly Cordia Resources) and someone we've placed in multiple roles over the years, we've had a front-row seat to her professional journey from accounts payable to finance leadership, consulting and, most recently, controller at The Clearing.
Building a Finance Career From the Ground Up
Across more than 35 years in accounting and finance, Donnita worked her way up from humble beginnings in accounts payable, becoming general ledger manager at a technology services and defense contractor company and building the department along the way. She also moved between large government contracting and small organizations, encountered acquisitions and divestitures, transitioned from full-time corporate roles into independent consulting and back again, and continually expanded her skills as business needs and environments changed.
During her time as a Senior Management Consultant with Cherry Bekaert, she supported organizations through accounting and finance initiatives while gaining exposure to a wide range of business challenges, industries and leadership teams.
Over the years, she built a professional network that became as valuable as any role she held or system she mastered. Her story offers a useful perspective for finance professionals navigating an increasingly dynamic market, as well as those who hire them.
Donnita’s Quick Career Tips for Finance Professionals
- Invest in development before it becomes necessary
- Build expertise that transfers across organizations and extends beyond one job description
- Stay connected to professional communities and maintain relationships that provide perspective throughout a career, not just during periods of transition
- Don’t be afraid to bet on yourself
Investing in Relevance Before the Market Demands It
One of the earliest inflection points in Donnita's career occurred while she was advancing in her career and managing the accounting team she built. A newly hired employee joined the department with less experience but earned a comparable salary solely because they held a degree and she did not. Rather than seeing it as unfair, she treated it as information. At the time, the market signaled that educational credentials were becoming increasingly important, so she responded by returning to school and earning her Bachelor of Science (B.S.) in accounting at 30.
Later, while building a consulting practice of her own and managing client responsibilities, she returned to school to earn her Master of Business Administration (MBA). Throughout her career, those decisions became part of a broader pattern as she repeatedly sought new skills, certifications and experiences as she watched the profession evolve around her.
Looking back, her approach reflects a principle that remains relevant for finance leaders today: Professional development is most valuable when pursued before it becomes a requirement. Organizations regularly evaluate their readiness for changing market conditions, and careers can benefit from the same mindset. And today, that moment is artificial intelligence (AI).
Fluency in AI Is Becoming a Requirement
If there’s one obvious modern example of proactive career management and investing in relevance, it’s AI.
When asked how she resources herself today in a smaller organization without the infrastructure available inside larger enterprises, Donnita pointed to three things: her network, external expertise and AI. Rather than viewing AI as a threat, she sees it as another capability finance professionals need to understand.
"It's not going to be AI taking over. It's going to be the people that know AI."
Her observation aligns with a broader trend across the profession. As automation continues to reduce manual work and streamline routine processes, finance leaders are increasingly expected to focus on interpretation, decision-making, forecasting and strategic guidance.
For most finance professionals, the challenge in AI relevancy won’t be using AI but rather staying curious and recognizing which emerging capabilities are worth investing in before they become widespread expectations.
Like returning to school earlier in her career, Donnita views AI as another signal from the market. Professionals can wait until the expectation becomes formalized, or they can begin developing familiarity now. For finance leaders seeking long-term career durability, the latter approach tends to create more options.
Building Expertise That Extends Beyond a Job Description
Another theme that emerges throughout Donnita's career is the ability to create value across multiple functions rather than becoming narrowly defined by a single role.
After leaving an aircraft engineering company and transitioning into consulting with Cherry Bekaert, she was placed in a short-term contract engagement at an aerospace and security company that was initially expected to last approximately one year. Instead, the engagement evolved into a six-year opportunity. According to Donnita, that longevity came largely from a willingness to contribute wherever the business needed support.
Her background spanning accounts payable, general ledger, finance and project accounting allowed her to move across functional areas and support a variety of initiatives. She often describes herself as a "wild card," not because she was unpredictable, but because she could step into different situations and quickly add value. When the company tried to make her role permanent, they found the job she had built was too broad and valuable to fit any standard job description.
For today's finance professionals, that versatility has become increasingly important, especially as AI continues to enter the finance function.
Many organizations are looking for finance leaders who understand how data, systems, reporting, operations and strategy connect to one another — the foundation of finance modernization. Technical expertise remains critical, but broader business understanding is often what enables professionals to move into larger leadership roles.
In Donnita's case, that broader perspective helped her remain relevant across multiple organizations, industries and stages of her career.
Systems Expertise Creates Career Flexibility
Deltek Costpoint, which has long served as a core platform within the government-contracting ecosystem, became Donnita’s "bread and butter" and provided a foundation for much of her technical finance and accounting expertise. Over time, that experience expanded into other systems, software platforms and environments, including QuickBooks and Costpoint conversions and property management platforms such as Yardi.
Through implementations, process improvements and years of hands-on experience with Costpoint, which she described as complex, Donnita developed a deeper understanding of how financial systems support business operations. That made it easier to learn other platforms and adapt to new environments throughout her career.
As specialized talent markets continue to evolve, system fluency can become a meaningful differentiator. Deep involvement within ecosystems such as Costpoint and government contracting often helps professionals better understand career paths, compensation dynamics and emerging opportunities while helping employers identify specialized talent.
Hiring companies often miss this when they screen for exact software experience. Systems fluency is about understanding how information moves through a business. That knowledge transfers, and the specific software matters less than most hiring managers think.
The Power of Portable Relationships
Perhaps the most consistent theme throughout Donnita's career has been the value of relationships that extend beyond any one role, company or assignment.
Many of the mentors she referenced remain active professional contacts years later and could step into any role as needed. Former colleagues, including one who currently does part-time work for her, have become resources and collaborators. Connections established earlier in her career, like her colleagues at Cherry Bekaert, continue to influence opportunities today.
“Build a network of people you trust. They can pull from you, and you can pull from them. A network is not just LinkedIn connections for job searches. It is a working asset you maintain continuously, like any other.”
At one point in her career, she worked with our Recruiting & Staffing team as a permanently employed consultant, and when economic changes made independent consulting more challenging, she participated in our flexible staffing program.
Cherry Bekaert became one of the first calls she made, not because she lacked a broader network, but because she trusted the people involved and valued their perspective on the market. Because we already understood Donnita's strengths, work style and career goals, we could have more meaningful conversations than someone meeting her for the first time.
As she moved into leadership positions at various organizations, she relied on that same relationship to help identify talent for her own organizations.
These types of relationships are fundamentally different from transactional recruiting engagements. The most meaningful conversations often happen long before a hiring need or career move arises. Building a relationship over time allows advisors to develop a deeper understanding of an individual's goals, preferred environments and long-term aspirations, creating context that cannot be developed through a single conversation.
That context matters because throughout her consulting career with our team, every organization repeatedly sought to retain Donnita in permanent roles. Yet she remained committed to consulting for more than a decade, preferring the variety, flexibility and challenge it provided. That changed when an opportunity at The Clearing came along. Having worked with Donnita for years, our team understood not only her technical strengths, but also what she valued most in an organization. When the controller position at The Clearing emerged, we recognized it as the type of environment where she would thrive and encouraged her to explore it.
Why Market Awareness Matters
One of the more candid observations Donnita shared was that, after spending much of her career in government contracting and larger organizations, she did not always know how the external market viewed her experience.
She understood her capabilities and wasn’t afraid to bet on herself. But she lacked visibility into how those capabilities translated into opportunities, compensation expectations and career options outside the environments she knew best.
That is a challenge many experienced professionals encounter because addressing that knowledge gap often requires maintaining connections beyond an employer’s walls or internet browsers.
It is possible to become highly accomplished within an organization while simultaneously losing visibility into how the broader market is evolving. New skills emerge, compensation structures shift, and hiring priorities change. Through a combination of mentors, peers, professional networks, and the long-standing relationship with Cherry Bekaert, Donnita had access to the going rates, what companies were looking for, and how her experience translated into different opportunities.
A Different View of Career Durability
For Finance Professionals
Many discussions about career management focus on individual actions, such as earning degrees, developing skills, expanding technical expertise or building a professional network. While those activities matter, Donnita's experience suggests a broader definition of career durability.
Over the last three decades, she has continually invested in herself, but she has also invested in the relationships that supported that growth. That combination of continuous learning and continuous connection is what ultimately stands out.
"It's your skill set. A company just houses it. Your skill set and network belong to you, and they move with you between employers, but only if you stay connected to both.”
Career durability, then, is not simply about preparing for the next role but about building capabilities, relationships and market awareness that remain valuable regardless of where your career takes you next. And those investments often begin long before you need them.
For Organizations Building Finance Teams
Today, as controller at The Clearing, Donnita is helping leadership decide which work belongs with employees versus consultants, and what tasks could use outsourced support. While that mix is a strategic design decision, most companies make it by accident.
The hiring lesson in her story is clear. If you screen finance candidates on tenure and exact-match systems experience, you will filter out the wild cards: the people who can walk into an evolving environment, assess what matters and build what is missing. These candidates rarely surface through job postings because their value does not fit neatly into one position. Finding them is a curation problem — the problem our Recruiting & Staffing team exists to solve.
Your Guide Forward
At Cherry Bekaert, our Recruiting & Staffing Services role extends beyond filling positions. We help organizations and finance leaders build modernization-ready teams and support finance, HR and IT professionals throughout their careers by providing market insight, industry connections and long-term professional guidance. Whether you're a finance professional planning your next move or a finance leader preparing for challenges still on the horizon, we're here to help you move forward with confidence.
