Laura Hay ‘88 first joined the Accountancy Advisory Group (AAG) in 2019, while serving as executive vice president of The Ohio Society of CPAs (OSCPA), where she is now president and CEO. Founded in 1908, the OSCPA represents 17,000 members and has a 29-member staff headquartered in Columbus.
Hay joined the OSCPA soon after graduating from Miami, after spending a few years as auditing staff at PricewaterhouseCoopers. The OSCPA was one of her clients. She took a break for graduate school, and when she rejoined the profession, she asked her OSCPA contacts to serve as a reference. They happened to be interviewing for a CPA on their team at the time and ended up hiring Hay as their controller—beginning a career that has now spanned more than 30 years.
“Association management is a profession that a lot of people don’t hear about in school, but we all kind of fall into it and then we love it,” she said. She described professional associations as the “mortar” connecting the “bricks” of individual practitioners—protecting the broader policy and regulatory landscape so CPAs can focus on their day-to-day client work.
During her tenure, the OSCPA has been involved in major changes in the profession, including the pioneering CPA licensure reform—in 2025, Ohio became the first state to adopt the two-pathway CPA licensure model, allowing applicants holding a bachelor’s degree and 2 years of experience to sit for the exam, in addition to the path of a graduate degree with 1 year of experience.
Other initiatives she has helped advance include:
- The Ohio Accounting Talent Coalition, a grassroots industry sector partnership uniting employers, academic institutions, candidates, and state workforce development offices to strengthen the talent pipeline.
- Developing the student pipeline through outreach, including producing ready-made K–12 financial literacy and career lesson plans for teachers, the “Look Beyond” image campaign utilizing college student ambassadors as social media influencers, and the Destination Ohio CPA program, which hosts case competitions and provides CPA exam scholarships.
- National policy advocacy to qualify accounting as a STEM field, which opens up education funding.
In the AAG, Hay serves a unique role by connecting university leadership with the broader employer and CPA ecosystem. She sees herself as a bridge that relays legislative and industry shifts back to Miami faculty, students, and industry partners on the AAG, while bringing academic and student priorities to state policy discussions.
Hay shared three pieces of advice for accountancy students:
- Take the CPA exam early, while you’re still in school or in the summer immediately following graduation. “The pass rates do show that students perform better the closer that they are to their studies, so don’t procrastinate, just get it done.”
- Don’t discount the traditional path: Starting with a CPA firm gives you wide exposure across multiple industries and equips you to work with and even manage professionals in other fields, such as HR and IT.
- Nurture your relationships at Miami: “The relationships that you make now and that you make in the early years in your career are going to be very important because those are going to be your clients, the leaders of other businesses that you’re going to be working with in the future.”
Away from her work, Hay shares a passion for musical theater with her son, a graduate of The Ohio State University who studied neuroscience. Her lifelong love for music traces back to her undergraduate days at Miami where she sang with the Choraliers, a reflection of her belief that accountancy students are “never just one thing.”