Kim Griffin-Hunter
Partner / Deloitte & Touche / Miami
Beyond Audits: Golf, spa, the Bahamas.
Spa Recommendation: The Doral in Miami.
Reading Lately: John Grisham, Eric Dickey.
Education: Bachelor's, University of Miami, 1988; MBA, also from UM, 1995.
Lawyers have "Ally McBeal." Doctors have "ER." Politicians have "West Wing." What about the poor accountants? "We haven't really had a show where it's fun and exciting to be an accountant," laments Kim Griffin-Hunter. That's wrong, she says, because accounting is an exciting and dynamic career. She's sincere. Really.
At the tender age of 35, Griffin-Hunter has been a partner for three years at Deloitte & Touche in Miami. She's the first African-American woman partner at a Big Five firm in the state. She's also the national diversity partner for the assurance (that's audit) function at the firm.
A graduate of Miami Central Senior High School, Griffin-Hunter is lead partner on accounts with clients Benihana, Catholic Health Services, Interim Health Care, the North Broward Hospital District and Barry University. She knows her numbers and knows how to deliver strong messages with tact, says Tim Czerniec, Barry's senior vice president for business and finance. "At her young age, she's got more experience than most," he says.
At the national level, she works on recruitment, retention and promotion of a spectrum of people, from minorities to people in need of flexible schedules. "We have to have diversity to have the most talented people in order to satisfy our clients," she says. "It's something we have to do. It's not an option."
This month, she takes over as president of the 10,000-member National Association of Black Accountants. She thinks of association members when she does outreach, talking up accounting as a career to students. Members are CPAs for tennis stars Serena and Venus Williams, NBA stars, entertainers and entrepreneurs. They help take companies public. "Every day I wake up I do something different," says Griffin-Hunter. "Everyone who knows me knows I like excitement and I like change and I'm very upbeat."
Author, Author
Erik Vonk
Chairman and CEO / Gevity HR / Bradenton
Quote: The Georgia Farm: "It's a place to seek rest and a quiet environment."
The Future: Gevity will "further evolve to be the outsourcer of choice in America."
Retirement: "I didn't feel a lot of gratification with not doing anything at all."
On his Georgia farm, Erik Vonk grows cotton, peanuts and paulownias. Paulownias? "A beautiful tree with big leaves, about two square feet," Vonk says. And a fast grower -- up to 15 feet a year.
Vonk won't be spending much time any more watching the Paulownias grow. In April, the 49-year-old retiree was hired for $500,000 a year to revive growth at Bradenton's Gevity HR. Gevity (as in longevity) made its old Staff Leasing name as a professional employer organization. Co-employing blue-collar workers, it saved small firms money by pooling insurance purchasing and the like. In aggregate, the numbers got big. Gevity, co-employing more than 100,000, is No. 483 on the Fortune 500.
Last year, Gevity branched out as an outsourcer for virtually all human resources functions. It went upscale, looking for more white-collar workers who generate higher fees. The transition hasn't been a source of levity. Gevity lost $15.6 million on $3.2 billion in revenues last year, and CEO Michael Phippen was gone.
Vonk talks the same strategy, so all depends on implementation. "What we will be looking for is how Vonk executes and what that specifically means is how he balances growth and profitability," says Grant Jackson of First Analysis Securities in Chicago.
Born in Indonesia to Dutch parents and raised in Holland, Vonk started global staffing company Randstad's North American operation. In six years he took it to $1.5 billion in revenues and 55,000 billable workers. He was retired when Gevity called.
Vonk has a playful wit. "Ask me detailed questions, and I'll have to lie," he says in an interview after just eight days on the job. Did he spend the first week meeting with employees? "I've been hiding in my office." And he has intellect. While not cultivating exotic trees, he authored "Don't Get a Job, Get a Life."
'Old-Fashioned Values'
Ric Gregoria
Partner / Williams, Parker, Harrison, Dietz & Getzen / Sarasota
Interests: Boating, sailing.
Family: Wife of 18 years, Gina; daughters, Ashleigh, 9, and Chelsae, 11.
Quote: "I'm not the McDonald's of estate planning."
Ric Gregoria graduated first in the accounting program and business school at FSU in 1984, passed all the parts of the CPA exam on his first try and joined what was then Price Waterhouse. But accounting was just a backup in case he didn't make it as a lawyer. With such dedication to a contingency plan, it's not surprising that Gregoria became board-certified in wills, trusts and estates. He also has an AV rating from his peers, the top rating in the profession. He heads the 10-lawyer trusts section at Sarasota's Williams, Parker, Harrison, Dietz & Getzen.
Gregoria, 39, is a graduate of Tampa's Jesuit High School and the University of Virginia law school, where he was managing editor of the Virginia Tax Review. He calls his specialty "spectacular." It's the last bastion of the counselor-at-law "with old-fashioned values of integrity, service and relationships."
Gregoria, in addition to the usual planning work, restructures private businesses, including a $150-million, 10-business deal he worked on in the spring. "I find the things you accomplish for the people, to keep the family together through the shoals, to just be extremely gratifying," he says.
His volunteer credits include serving as past president of the American Heart Association in Sarasota and past chairman of the Family Counseling Center there. He's currently on the board of the Catholic Charities Foundation, the Education Foundation and is board development chair for Bishop Nevins Academy.
In 1999, because of his fund raising, he was inducted into the Knights of the Holy Sepulcher, a Catholic lay confraternity dating back centuries. Ahead, he plans to increase his focus on high-end, complex estates and trust work to the end of having "a shop in southwest Florida that is as sophisticated as any in the biggest city."