Champagnie-Dawkins CPAs PLLC

Samantha Bailey-Champagnie and Karen Dawkins share an alma mater, a franchise restaurant, a workplace, and their growing accounting firm, Champagnie-Dawkins CPAs PLLC. The CPA firm was launched in 2012, leveraging the partners’ experience working at major accounting and banking firms and their longtime community involvement in Queens. The firm specializes in small business accounting, auditing, taxation, and consulting.

The business partners share a commitment to business excellence, to their employees, and to their community. According to Ms. Dawkins, they have “always been entrepreneurial-minded,” even while working together as accountants at Deloitte and Touche LLP. As professional women with over twenty years of experience and as mothers with young children, they were motivated to consider a new path. They decided to take the leap and next came a business plan and the formation of a professional LLC.

When looking for startup financing, Ms. Bailey-Champagnie and Ms. Dawkins found BOC through their local economic development organization, Greater Jamaica Development Corp. BOC Capital Corp. used its SBA Microloan Program to fund equipment and marketing expenses for the business start-up.

In the years since Ms. Bailey-Champagnie and Ms. Dawkins launched the firm they have steadily grown their client base.  The firm now employs three full-time and three project-based workers and is always on the lookout for exceptional individuals to join the partnership.  The partners continue to be engaged with their local community, participating on boards and volunteering with a number of local non-profit organizations. In 2014, the partners joined BOC Capital to design and deliver customized QuickBooks training to construction contractors for the NYC EDC Blueprint for Success Program.

The pair attributes their success to their sensitivity to the needs of small businesses, “We’ve been in the grind,” says Ms. Dawkins.  “We know the challenges of a small business. We’re able to bring that experience to our clients.”