Ingram's November 2022

Tonya Mater , SVP/Chief Accounting Officer EPR PROPERTIES Tonya Mater will tell you that getting where she is—chief accounting officer for one of the region’s biggest public companies— might seem like the product of a long-term, strategic career plan. Except … she never really had one. Instead, “I do not take myself too seriously. I am humble and authentic. I am grateful for the success that I have had. I attribute my success to being hard-working, smart and lucky at times,” Mater says. Her most significant achievement, though, wasn’t luck. “I have built a great team at EPR. Whether at home or work, no one can do it all alone. Along with my husband and three amazing daughters, my team is my pride and joy. They are smart, thoughtful and hard-working. I can rely on them, and they can rely on me.” It also helps to start life with some powerful influences. Mater was raised in Lawrence by “a serial entrepreneur who was always running at least two businesses,” she says. “He franchised a convenience store, owned a fence business, plowed snow, tilled gardens and raised and sold cattle—anything to stay busy, make money and work hard.” Her mother, meanwhile, worked at the university, helping low-income students get financial aid for housing. But that was as far as Mom got without a college degree of her own, and “she always told me to get an education no matter what,” Mater says. “Both my parents believed in us and wouldn’t accept the excuse that we couldn’t do something because we were girls. They also encouraged my sister and I to do our best and not worry about the outcome. I didn’t expect perfection, so I didn’t fear failure. These attributes have helped me so much in life.” As did an innate comfort with numbers. “Since I was good at math, I was recruited in high school to major in engineering,” Mater says, but “it didn’t feel like the right fit for me because I hated all the science classes.” At her older sister’s urging, Mater checked out the business school, met an accounting

professor who became a mentor, and found that she really enjoyed accounting. She did stints with CBIZ-MHM, then KPMG, where a client company with just six employees saw something in her and brought her on board. With only 56 full-time employees today, the REIT is nonetheless en-

gaged in efforts to diversify its leader ship. That, Mater says, “has created opportunities that in turn are benefiting REITs specifically and really the cor porate world in general. Companies are seeing the benefits of hiring and promoting a diverse work force. I look forward to one day soon when we will think it is absurd that we require committees to focus on hiring women and minorities and that every workplace will focus on making every employee feel like they belong.”

Nancy McCullough , Founder and CEO E2E Nancy McCullough needs no lessons in the power of mentoring. “The very start of my career,” says the founder and CEO of e2E, “was marked by women helping women advance. I’ve carried that with me and carried it forward.” That lesson was rooted in her own experience going back to her days at Coe College and an accounting internship at Ernst & Young. More on that in a moment. But first, McCullough cites the gifts she received fromher parents, who adopted her and her brother, raised them in Urbandale, Iowa, and shaped a value set that would inform a career. “We lived a modest life, and my dad was creative in always making ends meet,” she says. “A college education for my brother and me was always a priority.” Her dad, she says, was a Depression-era kid who lost his own father at age 11 and became the “man” of the family at an early age. “He had a strong

business-services com pany. “Essentially, all the companies I worked in were either entrepren eurial or had ties to entrepreneurship,” Mc Cullough says. “When the opportunity at Kauf- fman came along, I saw it as yet another oppor tunity to study entre- preneurship without taking the risk of an

work ethic, was steady, dependable, loyal, humble, persistent, of high integrity, and a problem-solver.” McCullough had the good fortune to meet an accounting student who preceded her as an E&Y intern and had a determinative say in her successor’s selection. “Without her, I’m not sure I would have found my way into a Big 6 firm, which is an amazing career launchpad,” McCullough says. “I’ve carried that with me and carried it forward. I could name many women throughout my career that extended a hand up, as well as many I, extended a hand to. This is true even at e2E, where we have a 100 percent female leadership team.” As a first-generation college student in her family, she was only aware of two career options—accountant and math teacher. At Coe, “I found I was in the minority of students who graduated with the very degree they set out for upon entering college, and after 32 years, I have no regrets,” she says, because that allowed her to become a student of business. A stint at the Kauffman Foundation would ignite her own entrepreneurship, leading her to found e2E, a

entrepreneur. Being my father’s daught er, I’m pragmatic and cautious, so I never really dreamed of taking the leap to run my own business … however, like most entrepreneurs, I was passionate about a gap in the market that I saw during my time at Kauffman and, as a problem solver, I felt compelled to tackle it.” The broad values that have guided her, she says, are “to be genuine with all, work intentionally, do for at least one what you wish you could do for many, and in all things be grateful.”

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I n g r a m ’ s

Kansas City’s Business Media

November 2022