MY PATH
Evan Dickens, CPA
Partner
Evan is the leader of the Retirement Plan Audit team. He also works with small and mid-size businesses in the areas of financial statement assurance, retirement plan design & consulting, and tax planning and preparation.
As a Business Management major in college, Evan Dickens didn’t start out to become an accountant. However, accounting was one of the core classes and he found that it just made the most sense to him. The help and guidance of some wonderful professors at George Fox University helped to lay out the path and his major was changed to Accounting!
When looking for internships in college, one of those professors said, “you may want to look into Jones & Roth.” The recruiting process was a little different back in 2001: Evan printed out his resume, drove over to the Hillsboro office, and asked about possible internships. That day he got to meet with a manager, as well as a partner, and the next week was offered an internship. Once out of college, he had the opportunity to work for a ‘Big 4’ firm, but chose Jones & Roth and has stayed ever since.
Early in his career, Evan did a lot of audit work and, since it was going well, thought that he wanted to continue doing mostly that. But, he was asked to do a few employee benefit audits, and then a few more, and a few more. Then, the firm landed some big, interesting clients and he saw the opportunity for the firm to become experts in this specialty area. “That was a chance for me to create a path and a focus for my career,” he says, “and it was something I never expected to be working on.”
