Samantha Bowling on Leadership, Change, and the Next Decade
Samantha Bowling, managing partner at GW CPA LLP, has been recognized among the Most Powerful Women in Accounting. In a recent interview, she addressed what keeps her engaged in the profession, how women's roles in accounting have shifted, and where the field is headed.
What She Values About the Profession
Bowling describes her favorite aspect of the profession as the ability to drive change — at her own firm and across the industry more broadly. She prioritizes mentoring accountants coming up through the ranks and advancing diversity and inclusivity inside GW CPA.
The Evolving Role of Women in Accounting
Bowling has watched the profession shift from one in which women were substantially underrepresented in leadership to one where women increasingly hold partnership and executive roles. She actively champions advancement initiatives at her firm as part of sustaining that trajectory.
The Next Decade
Bowling expects artificial intelligence and machine learning to reshape the profession over the next ten years, streamlining audits and financial analysis. In her view, the automation wave creates capacity — not obsolescence — and lets professionals focus more on strategic work and client relationships.
Tools and Influences
- Favorite professional app: MileIQ for mileage tracking; Amazon's shopping and photo apps for collaboration.
- Podcasts: TED Talks, including Simon Sinek, Dan Gilbert, Brené Brown, Sam Berns, Alain de Botton, Lucinda Beaman, and Isaac Lidsky.
- Recommended reading: Together is Better (Sinek), Getting Naked (Lencioni), Be Useful: Seven Tools for Life (Schwarzenegger), The Rulebreaker: The Life and Times of Barbara Walters (Page), and Betty White: If You Ask Me (And Of Course You Won't).
Implications
For firm leaders, Bowling's framing of AI as capacity-building rather than role-replacing is the pragmatic stance most well-positioned firms are taking publicly. For accounting professionals considering their own career arcs, her emphasis on mentoring, leadership development, and deliberate specialization is a useful template.