Family Matters: Familiar Trail, New Direction

Hiking with his father a few years ago, J.D. McPhee, MSA ’19, confided that he wasn’t satisfied in his marketing career and wanted to study accounting.  

The family patriarch — John ’83 — proposed a deal: Enroll at Bentley and he’d cover the cost. 

“I knew the level of academic rigor it has, the career counseling and the job placement it has,” says John, who at graduation would join accounting firm KMG in Boston, which would become KPMG. “I told J.D., ‘This is why you go there.’”  

The advice echoed some that John himself received when scouting for colleges in 1970s. A friend of his father’s was a bank CFO with a degree from Bentley.  

“He told me to get into accounting because it’s the language of business,” John remembers. “It was a good recommendation.” 

J.D. admits that the field did not appeal to him early on. He studied marketing at the University of Colorado and worked in advertising for a year after graduating in 2017.  

“I should have paid more attention to what my father was saying,” says J.D., who has since come around to seeing accounting as “the backbone of business.”  

His talent for math and appreciation for the rules-based nature of accounting also factored into J.D.’s decision. And as much as he appreciated his father’s financial offer, the university’s strong academic program and career services were final selling points. 

The similarities between father and son don't end with Bentley.

In September 2019, J.D. became an audit associate in the Boston office of KPMG; the firm had recruited him on campus, shortly after he started classes.  (J.D.'s sister also works there.) John was the first in his cohort to earn his CPA credential, and J.D., who received his CPA license in early 2021, was among the first in his KPMG class to do so.

Last year, the 60-year-old McPhee retired as a partner in the San Francisco office, after 37 years at KPMG in Audit and Deal Advisory. And while J.D. is just starting out, he shares his father's faith in a Bentley education.

"Bentley is going to continue to pay dividends down the road — no matter what path I take in the future."