For years, management best practices emphasized uniformity: standard processes, standardized expectations, and treating everyone the same in the name of fairness. But today’s workforce looks very different than it did in the late 1990s and early 2000s. With multi-generational teams, shifting attitudes toward work-life balance, and an increased focus on emotional intelligence, leaders are being forced to rethink what “fair” actually means. Research consistently shows that employees who feel understood and supported as individuals are more engaged, more productive, and more likely to stay.

So here’s the real question leaders are grappling with now: how do you lead people equitably without managing everyone identically—and why does managing people the same way often backfire?

That’s the focus of this episode of Beyond the Ledger, hosted by Troy Ashby. In this conversation, Troy sits down with Krysta Gaither, Chief Financial Officer of Plyler Construction, to explore how modern leadership has evolved and why individualized management has become a competitive advantage. Drawing from decades of experience across manufacturing, real estate, and construction—from Fortune 500 companies to family-owned businesses—Krysta shares how trust-based, human-centered leadership delivers stronger teams without lowering standards.

What You’ll Learn…

• Why Treating Everyone the Same Falls Short
• Krysta’s Path Into Accounting
• Learning Leadership from Good and Bad Managers
• Trust, Open Doors & Emotional Intelligence
• Managing Individuals, Not Systems
• From Fortune 500 to Family-Owned Business
• Storytelling Financials for Non-Accountants
• Work-Life Boundaries & Burnout
• Addressing Toxic or Disruptive Behavior
• Final Leadership Lessons

Krysta Gaither is a management accounting professional with experience across real estate, manufacturing, and commercial construction. She’s worked in national markets, led cross-functional initiatives, and been hands-on with accounting systems and ERP integrations. While she holds an MBA, she’ll tell you her most valuable lessons came from solving real problems alongside great teams.

Krysta thrives in collaborative, complex environments. From coordinating treasury, IT, and field teams at CBRE to managing multiple revenue streams at Plyler Construction, she’s built a career around problem-solving and bringing people together. She believes strong teams are formed by working toward a shared goal.

Outside of work, Krysta is a competitive cheer mom, loves gardening at her family farm, and has bungee jumped more than once — with skydiving still on the list.

Workplace flexibility has shifted from a culture debate to a retention lever—especially as more professionals are becoming parents later, right when they’re stepping into mid-management and executive-track roles. Childcare and caregiving logistics don’t just strain families; they strain talent pipelines, and the companies that treat parenting as a “personal issue” are often the same ones wondering why their best people keep leaving. In industries like construction, where long-term demand is tied to population growth and workforce continuity, the stakes are even higher. The question isn’t whether employees value support—it’s whether businesses can afford not to build it into how they operate.

So, what does it look like to treat support for parents as a business strategy—one rooted in trust, performance, and long-term workforce planning rather than one-size-fits-all perks?

That’s the focus of this episode of Beyond the Ledger, hosted by Troy Ashby, featuring Jessica Greiner, Chief Financial Officer at Talley Riggins Construction Group. Their conversation moves from Jessica’s unconventional path into finance leadership (and what she learned building investor relations from the ground up) to what talent attraction looks like now, why “flexibility” only works when it’s paired with accountability, and how parenting reshapes leadership perspective. Along the way, they dig into generational expectations at work, how employees can advocate for themselves without burning trust, and what future leaders should do early to stand out.

What You’ll Learn…

• Why Supporting Parents Matters to Business
• Jessica’s Career Path into Finance Leadership
• Building Investor Relations from the Ground Up
• Transitioning into the CFO Role
• Attracting & Retaining Talent in Today’s Market
• Flexibility, Trust & Performance
• Parenting, Leadership & Perspective
• Generational Differences in the Workplace
• Advocating for Yourself at Work
• Advice for Future CFOs & Leaders

Jessica Greiner is a finance leader, executive voice, and working parent navigating the realities of today’s blended workforce. She believes we’re at a critical inflection point where career growth, middle management pressure, and family responsibilities collide — and that flexible work needs to be rethought as a real operating strategy, not a perk chosen once a month.

Jessica has built a high-profile corporate career while raising four children, including triplet sons and a daughter. She’s led organizations through major strategy and management changes, shepherding public credibility and investor confidence — including helping raise a company’s trading multiple following its first-ever Investor Day. In 2024, she was named CFO of DFW’s fastest-growing middle-market company, stepping into a role that demands both conviction and accountability.

One of her greatest professional challenges has been building consensus around bold strategies — and then standing behind those decisions publicly. Outside of work, Jessica is California-born, Alaska-raised, Hawaii-tested, Texas-rooted, and a lifelong sports fan.

In a moment when AI tools, creator platforms, and decentralized media are reshaping how companies grow, founders are being forced to rethink what actually drives long-term success. According to Forbes, citing CB Insights research, 42% of startups fail because there simply isn’t a market for their product or service. As markets move faster and business models evolve more frequently, the ability to adapt, listen, and stay grounded in genuine interest has become a critical advantage. The stakes are high: founders who chase ideas instead of passion often burn out before the market ever catches up.

So what really matters more in entrepreneurship today: finding the “perfect” business idea—or building something you genuinely care about enough to evolve it over time?

That question sits at the heart of the latest episode of Beyond the Ledger, hosted by Troy Ashby, in a conversation with Ben Maitland, Founder and CEO of MarketScale. Together, Ashby and Maitland explore the realities of founding and scaling a business—from wearing every hat in the early days to resisting commoditized growth in favor of long-term vision. The discussion spans entrepreneurship, user-generated content, authenticity in marketing, and why passion consistently outperforms spreadsheets when it comes to building something that lasts.

What You’ll Learn…

• Why Passion Matters More Than Market Size
• Founder vs. CEO: Wearing Every Hat
• Becoming the Bottleneck (and Breaking It)
• Why MarketScale Found Its Thesis
• Authenticity vs. Corporate Theater
• User-Generated Content & Decentralized Growth
• Hiring, Culture & Vision Alignment
• Why B2B Is Catching Up to B2C
• Advice for Aspiring Founders
• Execution Over the Perfect Idea

More than a CEO, Ben is an entrepreneur and a founder at heart. He founded MarketScale in 2015, after spending nearly a decade at Multiview, where he helped grow the sales organization and launch new products. MarketScale represented a chance to go solo — to work on the other side of marketing, focusing on content rather than advertising.

Bootstrapped from the start with no outside investment, MarketScale grew through persistence — making sales, keeping customers, and continuously improving the product.

Ben played college baseball at Auburn University and had an unconventional upbringing, including years spent living on a boat, being homeschooled, and sailing throughout the Caribbean.

His approach to running the business is wide-ranging — spanning product, sales, and service — all with the goal of delivering authentic, crowd-driven media. Through UGC and a focus on empowering smart people, Ben works to help companies grow with the power of their communities.

Leadership today is being reshaped by a simple lesson many leaders learn the hard way: a team full of people who think the same way won’t get you very far. Research shows that teams with deeper diversity—meaning differences in perspectives, values, and cognitive frameworks—consistently outperform more uniform teams in creativity, innovation, and complex decision-making. Today, as organizations demand adaptability and deeper human-centered leadership, understanding why great leaders “hire their opposite” is proving to be a powerful differentiator.

What makes leaders more effective when they surround themselves with people who don’t think, act, or work like they do? And more importantly, how can emerging leaders adopt this mindset early enough to transform both their teams and their own growth trajectory?

These central questions anchor this episode of Beyond the Ledger. To answer them, host Troy Ashby sits down with James Lunday, CPA, CGMA, Vice President and Controller at Tenaska Power Services Co., to unpack this philosophy through the lens of lived experience. Their conversation spans early-career leadership challenges, the power of CliftonStrengths, what failure teaches us, and how serving in the nonprofit space has deepened James’ understanding of influence, humility, and purpose.

What You’ll Learn…

• Why Leaders Shouldn’t Hire People Like Themselves
• From Small Town to Corporate Finance
• Early Career Failures & Communication Struggles
• Earning Trust When Your Team Didn’t Choose You
• Building a Team That Doesn’t Think Like You
• The 3-Year Leadership Maturation Process
• Using CliftonStrengths to Maximize Team Potential
• Habits, Weaknesses & Complementary Hiring
• The Farm Life Lessons That Built His Discipline
• Moving from Success to Significance
• Leading the ARC of DFW & Supporting Families with Disabilities
• Leadership Through Influence (Not Authority)
• Expectations & How They Shape Outcomes
• Final Leadership Lesson: Always Stay Coachable

James Lunday is the Vice President and Controller at Tenaska Power Services Co., known for his practical, humility-driven approach to leadership. His career has been shaped less by big accolades and more by learning through failure — including stepping into management early, realizing he wasn’t ready, and using that experience to evolve into the leader he is today.

One of James’ biggest growth moments has been learning to trust his team, along with navigating a mid-career shift into a new city and industry. Outside of work, he serves as President of The Arc of DFW Area, a volunteer-run nonprofit supporting individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities — a mission deeply connected to his family.

On a lighter note, James is a self-described “Input and Context” enthusiast — the kind of person who absorbs information just for the joy of it. His current hyper-focus? Disneyland and Disney World updates. If there’s a new ride, park upgrade, or behind-the-scenes story on YouTube, James has likely watched it.

James brings humility, humanity, and a refreshingly honest perspective to every conversation — embracing the idea that you don’t need a flawless career to be an impactful leader.

Leadership conversations are shifting as companies navigate rapid change, tighter labor markets, and evolving employee expectations. Teams want leaders who show up with humility, clarity, and a genuine investment in people—traits that can’t be faked and can’t be automated. And with studies consistently linking team engagement to the quality of direct leadership, understanding how effective leaders are developed is becoming a top organizational priority.

Which leads to a natural question: How does someone move beyond simply managing work and instead learn to elevate people—and what role do grit, trust, and heart play in becoming a leader others want to follow?

Welcome to Beyond the Ledger. In the latest episode, host Troy Ashby sits down with Christie Linebarger, Director of Talent Acquisition at Sammons Industrial. Together, they explore Christie’s remarkable journey—from her Air Force upbringing across Hawaii and Tokyo, to her evolution from tech recruiter to trusted leadership voice, to the life transitions and resilience that inspired her new book, Stick Your Beak In The Ground: How Showing Up, Digging In, and Doing the Hard Stuff Builds A Life That Matters. Their conversation unpacks what leadership requires today, how teams flourish under trust and humility, and why “sticking your beak in the ground” may be the most important discipline in both career and life.

What You’ll Learn…

• Why Leadership Is Really About Elevating Others

• Growing Up as an Air Force Brat

• From Manager to Leader

• Humility, Trust & Servant Leadership

• How to Develop Future Leaders

• Creating a Team That Soars

• The Story Behind Her Book

• Sticking Your Beak in the Ground

• Christie’s Advice for Emerging Leaders

Christie Linebarger is a recruiting leader and new author, known for building strong teams and elevating talent. She writes about grit, faith, and real life. Interestingly, she never planned on becoming a recruiter — she stumbled onto the field and quickly realized it was exactly where she belonged.

Over the years, she has built a strong career in tech recruiting and talent leadership, becoming known for elevating the candidate experience, creating scalable processes, and leading teams through fast-paced, high-growth environments.

Her passion is for people. Christie thrives in developing talent, mentoring future leaders, and building motivated, resilient teams. Career highlights include her transition from individual contributor to people leader, guiding succession planning efforts, and empowering teams to perform at their best. She’s also navigated tough moments, from motivating teams during company declines to managing through an unexpected layoff.

She graduated from high school in Tokyo, has been married for nearly 30 years, and unapologetically treats her Doodles — George and Maggie — like family. At home, she’s wife to Chris and mom to two redheaded daughters.

Success today looks different—defined less by stability and more by the freedom to adapt and evolve. Professionals across industries are reimagining their careers, moving away from predictable ladders toward paths that reflect purpose and balance. What once meant climbing steadily toward partnership or promotion now often means taking bold pivots or pursuing second acts that better align with personal values. In this new landscape, risk isn’t something to fear—it’s often the only way forward. Against that backdrop, Johnnie Akin’s journey from the halls of Deloitte to startup executive and now entrepreneur offers a roadmap for professionals navigating change. According to recent Gallup data, 51% of U.S. employees are either actively seeking or watching for new job opportunities—the highest level in a decade.

So, what does it take to leave a stable Big Four career and build something of your own—without losing your footing along the way?

Welcome to Beyond the Ledger. In the latest episode, host Troy Ashby sits down with Johnnie Akin, CPA and Co-Owner of Floor Coverings International, to unpack a career that’s stretched from the corridors of Deloitte to the grit and growth of small-business ownership. Together, they explore the intersection of faith, failure, and leadership—how to let go of certainty, embrace reinvention, and build processes that withstand chaos.

Key topics of discussion:

• Leaving Deloitte & Rethinking Success – Why Akin stepped away from a Big Four career path to focus on family, faith, and fulfillment—choices that would ultimately pave the way for his entrepreneurial leap with Floor Coverings International.

• From Big Four to Startup CFO – How relationships opened the door to a startup opportunity and what it taught him about adaptability.

• Building Process in Chaos: Lessons from Growth Stage – Translating enterprise-level discipline into fast-moving startup environments.

• Transitioning from CFO to COO – Shifting from finance to operations and leading through organizational change.

• Leadership, Team Building & Hard Decisions – How instincts, accountability, and decisiveness define effective leadership.

• Restructuring, Layoffs & Resilience – Managing through downturns with transparency and empathy.

• Owning a Franchise & Family Priorities – The move to entrepreneurship, the launch of Floor Coverings International in Central Texas, and balancing business ownership with family life.

• Faith, Failure & Fast Growth – Seeing failure as learning—what Akin calls “tuition payments”—and how faith informs his resilience.

• Final Advice: Read More, Fail Forward – Why continual learning and embracing setbacks are essential to long-term success.

Johnnie Akin is a CPA, former Deloitte senior manager, and seasoned operator who has led businesses through every stage of growth—from startup to scale restructuring. After years as a CFO, COO, and startup president, Johnnie made the leap to entrepreneurship and now owns Floor Coverings International, serving most of Central Texas. A self-described jack-of-all-trades and master of none, Johnnie believes in surrounding himself with great people, playing the long game, and never stopping the pursuit of learning. Outside of work, he enjoys spending time outdoors, watching sports, and being with his family.

The accounting pipeline is in flux. After years of decline in new graduates, the AICPA reported that bachelor’s completions fell 7.8% in 2021–22 and master’s fell 6.4%. In Fall 2024, undergraduate accounting enrollment rebounded by about 12%, while graduate enrollment continued to dip, underscoring a profession still recalibrating its talent model. For those building or advancing their accounting careers, leadership, retention, and strategic moves are no longer nice to have; they are operational necessities.

So, what does it really take to pivot from SEC reporting into general ledger operations at a senior level, build a stable team in a tight market, and keep your CPA journey from defining you only by the score on a test?

Welcome to Beyond the Ledger, where host Troy Ashby, CPA, sits down with Shanice E. Scott, the Director of Accounting at J. Hilburn. In this episode, Troy and Shanice delve into her accounting career evolution, moving from financial reporting to GL leadership, and how she navigated a steep on-ramp at a new company. They also discuss the people-first systems that keep teams engaged and growing.

Key Moments from the Episode:

• Growing Up a Longhorn: Faith, Family, Finance – how her family’s UT legacy shaped her values and drive

• Early Career at EY & Corporate Journey – lessons learned from Big Four beginnings to senior leadership

• The Pivot: From Financial Reporting to GL – navigating a rare mid-career shift into operations and execution

• Overcoming Imposter Syndrome & Leading with Empathy – developing people-first leadership grounded in care and authenticity

• Building Retention Through Care & Connection – why celebrating wins and personal milestones keeps teams engaged

• The CPA Journey: Four Tries, One Lesson in Resilience – perseverance and integrity through professional challenges

• Purpose, Leadership & Faith – how faith, family, and finance remain her guiding tenets

Shanice Scott is an accomplished Accounting Director with more than two decades of experience leading financial reporting and accounting operations for both public and private companies. She currently serves as Accounting Director at J. Hilburn, where she oversees everything from payroll and budgeting to tax compliance and financial reporting. Before joining J. Hilburn, Shanice led financial reporting at The Container Store, managing SEC filings, consolidations, and major acquisitions.

Her career also includes leadership roles at Pier 1 Imports, Michaels Stores, and Brinker International, as well as early experience with Ernst & Young. Known for her technical expertise and calm leadership, Shanice has built high-performing teams and guided companies through complex accounting challenges with precision and integrity. She’s a CPA and holds both her Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Accounting from The University of Texas at Austin.

Connect with:

• Troy Ashby -  https://www.linkedin.com/in/troyashby/
• Shanice Scott - https://www.linkedin.com/in/shanicescott/
• J.Hillburn - https://jhilburn.com/

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics projects that employment of accountants and auditors will grow by about 5 percent between 2024 and 2034. That growth is fueled by a combination of factors: companies facing increasingly complex regulatory requirements, an expanding economy that requires financial oversight at every level, and ongoing retirements and career shifts that continue to open up positions in the accounting field. It’s a reminder that while opportunities in the field are strong, the profession itself is evolving and accountants are expected to adapt their skills and leadership approach to stay ahead.

What lessons can finance professionals take from someone who’s successfully pivoted from public accounting into the C-suite of a major construction firm?

Welcome to Beyond the Ledger. In this first episode, host Troy Ashby, President at Benchmark Search, sits down with Joe LaPolla, Chief Financial Officer at Driver Pipeline Company, a Texas-based contractor with over 1,000 employees and a 50-year legacy. Their conversation spans Joe’s early years in public accounting, the leap into industry, and how he leads today at the intersection of finance, operations, and HR.

What You’ll Learn…

• Joe LaPolla’s Career Origins: From Accounting to Construction

• Navigating the Transition from Public Accounting to Industry

• Building Strong Teams and Culture in Construction Finance

• The Power of Networking: Building and Maintaining Relationships

• Key Insights on Career Growth and Strategy

Joe is the Chief Financial Officer of Driver Pipeline Company, a Texas-based pipeline construction company with over 1,000 employees and a legacy spanning more than 50 years. He brings a strong background in heavy civil construction, having started his career in public accounting. Joe leads the company’s accounting, finance, and human resources functions, with a focus on aligning financial strategy with field operations. Outside of work, Joe is married to another CPA, and together they have four young kids who help keep priorities in perspective.

Connect with Joe: www.linkedin.com/in/joe-lapolla-cpa-57731316

Connect with Driver Pipeline: https://www.linkedin.com/company/driver-pipeline/