This business-to-business outreach informs hiring managers and the senior management team about the advantages of having their employees become CMAs and of hiring CMA-certified professionals. To reach this audience, IMA’s business development team is pursuing or planning a variety of initiatives, including:
- “Lunch Is on Us” presentations—During these lunch sessions, IMA’s business development team conducts information sessions about IMA and the CMA and picks up the tab for lunch. A CMA already at the company typically helps to facilitate these gatherings. This initiative has led to presentations at organizations in a variety of industries and of various sizes.
- Corporate Ambassador Program—This new program asks members of the IMA Global Board of Directors to introduce the CMA to companies with which they have relationships.
- Corporate Partner Program—Scheduled to be launched this spring, this program will recognize and offer exclusive benefits to organizations that support the CMA and the development of finance and accounting talent. It will have two partnership levels—Gold and Platinum—based on the number of staff who are IMA members and enrolled in the CMA program.
In addition, we remain committed to programs like our successful corporate recognition events, which gather groups of finance and accounting leaders to help drive awareness of the CMA and attract new candidates. We launched this program in 2015 and have held events in more than 20 cities across the United States as well as in Europe. This year, we have events planned in Dallas, Texas; Charlotte, N.C.; the greater New York City area; and Pittsburgh, Pa.
IMA also continues to participate in CFO conferences around the world, where our business development team meets hundreds of individuals working at the highest levels of their organizations.
I’m firmly committed to corporate outreach as a way to extend IMA’s—and the CMA’s—sphere of influence, and I invite all IMA members to participate in these efforts. You can request a Lunch Is on Us presentation, for example, or, at a more grassroots level, discuss your CMA and IMA membership with your peers or at your company.
You can reach me at christian.cuzick@imanet.org to discuss this or any other subject.
March 2020
