About Us
Empowering CPA Firms to Grow Together While Staying Independent
Ascend has created a modern platform for the best entrepreneurial CPA firms in the country so they can stay independent while growing together.
We have a fresh approach to growth, partnership, and practice management for our Partner Firms. Our firms operate independently under their own leadership and receive resources and capital for investments in talent, mergers, and technology. The Ascend Partner Services team - a team of 70+ passionate individuals who wake up every day ready to serve our firms - offers support via PeopleFirst culture programs, a Rising Star professional development program for high potential employees, leadership coaching and more. We are proud to say we've welcomed hundreds of new Ascend owners - from partners to high performing managers - as part of our mission to make the path to partnership more rewarding, more accessible and more exciting to the next generation of firm leaders.
Unlock your firm's full potential with Ascend.
Our Aim
Ascend’s Values
Ascend Partner Services - the team that serves our partner firms - proudly lives by 5 core values.
Serve Whole-Heartedly
We love our people and serve them with positivity and kindness.
Own It
We seize growth opportunities with the passion, speed, and accountability of an entrepreneur.
Be Excellent
We set a high bar because our mission matters.
Win Together
We stay in sync, achieve as a team, and celebrate each other.
Bring the Sunshine
We have fun and bring enthusiasm to make the journey joyful.
Ascend Together:
Leading with Love
When Ascend's founding team gathered to set the vision and strategy for our organization, we did things a little differently — we started by sharing our individual values, passions, and professional purposes. A surprising value was consistently shared as we went around the room: Love.
Love — for our neighbors, not the romantic kind — is at the heart of why we started Ascend. We often use the phrase "People First" because it is through love for our people that we cultivate a joyful, engaged team who can make a positive impact in each other's lives and in the lives of everyone we touch through our work.
We celebrate that each of us is gifted with a unique combination of talents, attributes, experiences and perspectives to steward in our lives and careers. We are in awe of the amazing diversity of humanity and believe that we can maximize the impact Ascend has on the world by assembling diverse, complementary teams that love each other, learn from one another and flourish together.
We desire to see our people rise up and reach their full potential. Through structured, rigorous hiring processes and transparent performance management using scorecards that tie to career paths, we are designing our workplace to promote both personal and professional development. Everyone hired has an opportunity to invest in themselves on a path to excellence, contribute to our goals and participate in fulfilling, rewarding work.
We aim to create a peaceful atmosphere where all are loved and respected. We want to be known for interacting with grace, consideration, compassion, and kindness. We also want to communicate with clarity and candor as an expression of how much we care. We are committed to continuous learning for ourselves and our people on their leadership journeys and will provide safe ways for employees to receive and share honest feedback. Through our dedication to be outstanding in how we care for our relationships, we hope to grow and keep a diverse, engaged team over time.
We are on a mission to help entrepreneurial CPAs bring their firms into the new age, and as we do, we want to be remarkable in the way we build teams, provide opportunity, and love each other. When you join Ascend, you join a company passionate about using our excellence in business to lift people up. We hope you will join us on this ascent.
Our Ascend Community
We’re a proud member of the Alpine Investors Family
We are proud to be backed by Alpine Investors, a PeopleFirst private equity investor. Everyone has heard horror stories about private equity — Alpine is different. Their long-term orientation and focus on people makes them the perfect capital partner for Ascend.
Insights
