Power & passion
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ATHENA AWARD FINALIST
TENSIE HOMAN
FIRST FEMALE MANAGING PARTNER OF KPMG’S DENVER OFFICE EMBRACES HISTORY-MAKING ROLE
Growing up as the daughter of an accountant in Houston, Tensie Homan never believed that being a woman would be an obstacle to pursuing a career in accounting.
“My father was an assistant controller his entire career. He was certainly one of my biggest mentors in my life and certainly helped me understand what the opportunities were,” says Homan, who last year at the age of 39 became the first woman to be named managing partner in the more than 100-year history of KPMG’s Denver office.
“We never talked about my being a female being a challenge,” Homan says. “That wasn’t part of how I was raised. I was pretty much told I could do anything I wanted to and that I put my mind to.”
Now she’s in a position to assure other women, both in her office and on college campuses, that there is ample opportunity for them to develop into leaders in the field. After graduating from Texas A&M, Homan began her professional career in the Fort Worth office of KPMG in 1990. She left in 1997 to become vice president of finance at Kevco, a publicly held manufacturing and distribution company. She returned to KPMG two years later, joining the Transaction Services practice in the Silicon Valley office.
Transferring to the Denver office in 2004, Homan established a local Transaction Services practice and became a member of the office’s operating committee. Since that time, the transaction-services practice has gained market leadership in the Denver area and serves large and mid-sized companies in the area and across the country.
KPMG, a worldwide tax, audit and advisory firm, leads all the “big four” accounting firms in percentage of women partners – about 19 percent nationwide, and Homan says the Denver office’s percentage is consistent with that. Of the roughly 400 people in the KPMG Denver office, more than half are women.
Homan is involved with KPMG’s recruitment of accounting graduates and says, “Almost half of our new hires are females coming out of college. I do think it’s important for women who are looking at a career choice to see that it’s a very open and very significant opportunity for women to grow into leadership in accounting. We have a lot of flexible arrangements. Firms understand that when half of your work force coming out of college is female, that it (flexibility) is a benefit to retain those people to grow into leadership positions.”
Homan was nominated for the Athena Award by Brett Hanselman, an audit partner in KPMG’s Denver office. Hanselman heads up the KPMG Network of Women (KNOW) organization in the Denver office, a group whose goal is to increase retention and promotion of women in the office and across the firm. Obviously, Homan is an apt role model.
"It’s a very challenging profession, and I think it’s very important for young women to see other women in positions of leadership,” Hanselman says. “What Tensie brings to our office is a real passion about what she does. Her willingness to share her knowledge, her experience, her contacts and the relationships she has are really putting not only women but our entire office in a position to succeed and grow.”
Part of Homan’s passion includes the community as she oversees her office’s Involve program, a project undertaken in each KPMG office nationwide that provides more than $200,000 a year to local charities, including Junior Achievement, Race for the Cure and Family Volunteer Day. She also works with KPMG’s Family for Literacy, which donates books to schools.
Who knows, some of those book recipients might grow up to become KPMG employees, perhaps even partners in the firm.
“I think what’s most important at this time is that we retain our top talent and that we’re focused on quality work and that we continue to build relationships in the business community,” Homan says. “That’s what we’re focused on right now.”
— Mike Taylor
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