Tom Bonadio is the founder and chief executive of The Bonadio Group, Upstate New York’s largest accounting and consulting firm. In 2015, the firm was ranked Number 40 on the Accounting Today list of the nation’s Top 100 Firms. He reached those milestones by being one of the first to recognize and act on trends that are still changing the entire industry.

Tom spent his early working years at Arthur Andersen before starting his own firm in 1978–beginning with his mother and just one partner. He grew the firm from the ground up by carefully listening to his clients, understanding their needs and methodically building an organization to serve them. Today, the firm has 74 partners and more than 750 total employees in 10 offices. The Bonadio Group’s annual revenue tops $100 million, while the firm serves more than 20,000 clients. The firm’s rapid growth over the past several year is attributable to a combination of three actions: acquiring new clients, offering value-added services through the firm’s nine subsidiary organizations, and completing mergers with other high-quality, like-minded CPA firms in New York and Vermont.

Tom is a visionary in an industry that once was slow to change; he learned early on how to perform high-quality work, create loyal referral sources and hire the best talent to help do more of the same. He and his partners have built a company that serves thousands of clients and helps organizations of all types optimize their financial performance. It’s a company that is recognized in its industry and its communities as a superb place to work, and for the last three years was recognized as a Top Accounting Firm for Women CPAs by the Accounting & Financial Women’s Alliance and the American Women’s Society of Certified Public Accountants.

In addition to the firm’s many awards and milestones, Tom personally has been recognized with these distinctions: 2013 Managing Partner Elite List, Accounting Today Class of 2010 Rochester Business Hall of Fame 2009 Business Person of the Year, Small Business Council of Rochester 2006 100 Most Influential Practitioners, CPA Magazine 2004 Honorary Doctor of Laws Degree, St. John Fisher College 2004 CEO of the Year, Public Relations Society of America Rochester Chapter