Outstanding Association Executive Award Presented to Joanne Barry, CAE

Joanne Barry (second from right), CAE, executive director, New York State Society of Certified Public Accountants, received the 2012 Outstanding Association Executive Award from (left to right): Joel A. Dolci, CAE, NYSAE president and CEO; Mimi Eckert, CAE, executive director, American Board of Spine Surgery, and chair of NYSAE’s Awards Committee, and Louis Colletti, president and CEO, Building Trades Employers Association, and NYSAE chair of the Board.

The Outstanding Association Executive Award is given to the association executive who demonstrates exceptional qualities of leadership and service, not only in his or her own association, but also in the volunteer and professional community as a whole. More than any of NYSAE’s awards, this one is wide-ranging and externally oriented. While the other awards focus on contributions, service, and performance in relation to NYSAE, the Outstanding Association Executive Award considers more broad-based criteria, with the focus on overall excellence in the profession.  The 2012 recipient of NYSAE’s Outstanding Association Executive Award is Joanne Barry, CAE, executive director of the New York State Society of Certified Public Accountants (NYSCPA).

In 1981, Joanne joined the staff of the New York State Society of Certified Public Accountants as assistant director of public relations; 29 years later she became its executive director during one of the most fiscally challenging times encountered during the course of her career.

She was faced with difficult choices and an opportunity to restructure the direction and purpose of the organization, consolidated job duties across departments, and organized a membership task force to perform an environmental scan of the organization and to assess members’ perception of value, identify New York State Society of Certified Public Accountants competitors, how members rated various program and suggested programs to increase membership value, aiming to end the declining trend in membership. She took this message on the road, visiting all 15 New York State Society of Certified Public Accountants chapters to ask these same questions.  As a result, she cut outdated programming that worked 20 years ago but was no longer serving the mission of either organization. The plan introduced more relevant course topics and delivery systems at more competitive rates for today’s practicing certified public account. While the NYSSCPA transformation is ongoing, the results are positive.

Joanne is active in the association and not-for-profit community.  As a certified association executive and long-time member of NYSAE, she is committed to advancing and serving the profession of association and not-for-profit management. In 2007, she served as an NYSAE speaker for the course “CEO’s in the Hot Seat,” teaching chief executives how to handle hostile media interviews while retaining transparency and honesty in their responses. Said Joanne: “NYSAE has been such a valuable resource for my professional development in association and non-profit management. It is through NYSAE that I learned the value of becoming a CAE and with this organization’s support earned this credential myself. It is my hope that I have built an association that our nearly 30,000 CPA members find as valuable as I find my membership in NYSAE and ASAE.”