Firm Profile
Abrams, Foster, Nole & Williams, P.A. (AFNW) is a regional, multicultural public accounting firm founded in 1983 with a belief and practice of “quality without exception.” Headquartered in Baltimore, Maryland with a satellite office in Washington, D.C., AFN&W serves the Baltimore-Washington Metropolitan area, Northern Virginia, Delaware, and Southern Pennsylvania regions. Presently, AFNW employs more than 40 individuals. We are continuing to grow to meet the future development and continuing expansion of our clients and our organization. While we primarily perform audit attestation services, we also offer a wide array of accounting, tax, and consulting services.
We have been providing professional accounting, auditing, and consulting services since the inception of our firm. Our clients’ business and industry needs, challenges, goals, and expectations of us are our priority. We deliver technical skill, business knowledge, creative solutions, and timely value. Whether the skills and knowledge reside in our audit and business advisory, tax, or accounting & consulting services division, we assure that each client will receive the right people and the right solution.
We understand the needs of our non-profit, government, and commercial business clients and are continually building our firm to serve these entities’ needs. We have enhanced our quality control procedures, expanded our client service methodologies, and improved staff development practices. The increase in experience has spread throughout the firm and strengthened our ability to provide additional service to clients. We are a mature business experiencing growth and attracting bright, talented staff with an eye toward client service focused on maintaining national firm emphasis with small firm attentiveness.
Independent CPA firms may appear to be very similar; the fact is that AFN&W is significantly different from other firms in structure, governance, philosophy, and culture. In the past few years we have not lost any of our clients, large or small, as a result of our relationship-based approach of doing business. These important cultural and structural differences, some of them listed below, set our firm apart from others.
- The client comes first. We train our people to put the client at the center of all they do--not just 8 hours a day, but twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.
- Commitment to quality. We believe we owe our clients our best efforts...all the time, on every engagement. We believe in “quality without exception” and we live by this philosophy.
- Significant director, principal, and manager time. Our clients pay for and expect significant participation and time from our directors, principals, and managers during an engagement. We provide this participation on all engagements.
- We tailor our approach for each client. We do not use a canned approach where we treat each client the same. Instead we get to know each client’s business and the specific risks of that business, and then we develop an audit approach to address the risk identified.
Technical competence is very important to AFN&W and we ensure that we put quality first. This begins with our only accepting engagements that we have the technical competence and experience to perform. Some of the ways we ensure our technical competence are:
- Maintain a professional library with the latest changes and requirements in the profession
- Conduct monthly technical sessions for our audit personnel to debrief them on the latest issues
- Ensure all of our personnel receive at least 40 hours of professional education each year by conducting training sessions for all professional personnel on the latest developments and a refresher of technical issues
- Subscribe to professional technical update services
- Participate in industry organizations to stay current with the latest developments
- Attend industry conferences, seminars and training
- Obtain peer review every three years
- Hold discussions with subject matter experts, federal and state regulators and standards setters on new complex accounting and industry standards
- Seek consultation from other directors
- Utilize audit methodologies that focuses on risk
- Require an independent director review of all reports issued
- Continually monitor firm quality control procedures
- Establish individual staff development plans
AFN&W places a premium on the relationships we have created and maintained. Our professionals possess strong technical skills and ability. Equally important, our staff have strong personal qualities; demonstrated perceptiveness; the ability to think strategically and detect future implications of current needs and internal circumstances; communication and project management capabilities; and energy, enthusiasm and commitment to client service with high professional standards.
Our goal is to maintain consistency in the personnel assigned to engagements. In developing and expanding the firm, we have focused on having talented individuals with diverse backgrounds as part of our staff mix. We spend a significant amount of time in the development and training of our staff members to ensure that they are current in industry and business issues.
Arnold Williams, CPA, Managing Director is in charge of our Accounting and Consulting practice. Arnold has over 30 years of public accounting experience having his start as a Legislative Auditor for several years. Arnold is chair of the Baltimore Development Corporation and has been very active in community services in the Metropolitan Baltimore Area. As a board member of the National Association of State Boards of Accountancy, Arnold stays abreast of current trends and practices in the profession. He has extensive experience in providing value added consulting services to many clients of the firm in many capacities to assist in business growth and profitability.
Alicia Foster, CPA, Audit Director, is a founding partner and has over 25 years experience in public accounting. Alicia is very knowledgeable of the auditing and accounting requirements having served as the Chair of the Maryland State Board of Public Accountancy. Alicia has significant experience auditing federally funded programs and other nonprofits in various sectors to include consulting services to the industry. She serves on the Baltimore Workforce Investment Board (formerly known as the Private Industry Council) and maintains a working relationship with the MACPA. This allows her to keep abreast of the requirements of the profession. With over 25 years of auditing experience, she has significant knowledge of accounting and regulatory issues impacting the profession.
Gerald Abrams, CPA, Independent Review Director, is in charge of our tax and compliance practice. Gerald has over 30 years of public accounting experience and has expertise in advising clients on various tax strategies and compliance issues. Our pension and estate services are managed through his practice in the firm. Gerald is the Treasurer for the Hearing and Speech Agency of Baltimore and Co-Chair of the Small Business Committee for Northwest Hospital. He has extensive experience in helping organizations achieve optimal efficiency through effective utilization of resources while striving to reach their long term goals and realize their vision.