-
-
Loading
Loading
It would be fair to say Amariah Dawes’ passion for small business acumen runs in the family.
Her father is Guinness World Record-holding comic daredevil Bello Nock, so she saw what that fame looked like behind the scenes — and how much work her mother, Jennifer Nock, had to do to manage the business behind the entertainment.
Dawes has emulated that in her own career, striving, whether consciously or not, to be the exuberant, many-skilled engine that makes a company run. In her role as senior operations manager at Bradenton-based accounting firm Johnson Messal Bristow, her responsibilities have been diverse, from designing the nascent firm’s website to writing an employee manual largely from scratch. She’s championed a mentorship program that makes almost everyone both a mentor and a mentee, which has helped lead to a retention in which a number of interns have stayed on to work permanently. And during tax season, she’s the one cheering on all the accountants to get through the most stressful time of year, every so often passing out Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups as an incentive to get through another day.
“Sometimes when I’m introducing myself and networking, I’ll say, 'Oh, I work at a CPA firm, and I’m one of the only non-CPAs,'” Dawes says, “and it’s because I do everything else so that they can go be great CPAs.”
But Dawes’ path to Johnson Messal Bristow was not exactly written in the stars. While studying early childhood education, she took a job as one of the first employees at TreeUmph! Adventure Course in east Manatee County, working at the front counter. From there, she eventually became sales manager as the zipline course expanded. Unforeseen setbacks led Dawes to decide it was time to try something new, even if that meant experimenting with an administrative role at a local CPA firm.
“I honestly thought this would be a stepping stone. I’ll learn things, but I didn’t think it was going to be a long-term career path, either,” she says.
When COVID-19 hit, Dawes was one of the few working in the office, and she didn’t expect to be called into a conference room by two of the firm’s CPAs, Jennifer Messal and Lisa Johnson. The big reveal: the two were going to start their own firm, and they wanted Dawes by their side. It was an “immediate yes,” Dawes says.
It’s no surprise Dawes had a hard time choosing between Messal and Johnson as her mentor. What she sees in both of them is an example in not just how to work but how to live.
“They’re strong professional women who have amazing partners that are really supportive of that,” she says. “That has always been so inspiring to me, thinking about how I can shape my life with my husband, seeing that I don’t have to make myself smaller as a woman.”