Kirk Kleckner, Volunteer Excellence Award
Rachel Kats | October/November 2022 Footnote
Editor's note: Updated September 30, 2022
It takes a good many people to execute a great conference, and key to that are subject matter experts, like Kirk Kleckner, whose knowledge and experience help curate meaningful educational programming.
Kirk earned the MNCPA Volunteer Excellence Award, which honors those who have volunteered with the MNCPA for at least five years and provided leadership or significant contributions. For more than a decade, Kirk’s work on the Business Valuation Conference Task Force helped lead to its success.
His breadth of knowledge comes from working for decades in the accounting industry, including 19 years with an accounting firm in roles as shareholder, chief operating officer and director of business valuation and litigation support services. Afterward, he went on to become CFO of Walser Automotive Group before founding ValuationUSA, LLC, a valuation, succession planning and litigation support firm serving closely held businesses and their owners.
The needs and demands of clients have diversified and grown over the years, Kirk said, but his favorite part about being a CPA continues to be working with and helping others.
His helpfulness has come into play with his work on the conference task force. Business valuations are highly technical, and MNCPA staff have often needed task force support explaining some of the ideas behind session titles. He has always come prepared, shared ideas and worked with fellow committee members to build a robust and meaningful schedule.
This is no small feat, considering that the needs of the CPA community are very broad when it comes to business valuation. Those who specialize in the area like very detailed and advanced types of training and education whereas others, who are starting out or handle a few valuations a year, require more basic and intermediate levels of education.
“There’s a real need to provide education that meets the level of that particular professional and they’re all important,” he said. “That’s one of the rewarding things, but at the same time daunting things that the Business Valuation Committee deals with every single year and the committee has been very successful, I think, over the years.”
The conference track record of attendance and evaluations bears that out.
As Kirk transitions to retirement, and recently surpassed 40 years of MNCPA membership, he said he’s been grateful for the opportunity to contribute to the profession and the organization.
“Like anything in life, you get out of it what you put into it,” he said. “If you have time to give back in different ways, the society is a great way to give back.”
