Let’s start with what Chris didn’t do. He didn’t graduate with an accounting degree and immediately open a practice in a strip mall. He didn’t learn tax preparation from a YouTube playlist. He didn’t apprentice under someone’s uncle who’s been doing 1040s since the Reagan administration. He went to war.
After earning his Bachelor of Business Administration from Kent State University’s Ambassador Crawford College of Business and Entrepreneurship, Chris walked into The Walt Disney Company’s tax division — and stayed. This is not a summer internship story. Disney’s tax operation is one of the most sophisticated in corporate America: multi-state income tax compliance across dozens of jurisdictions, general ledger reconciliation for a company generating $90 billion in annual revenue, tax provision modeling that requires the kind of precision where a decimal point in the wrong place moves millions. Chris didn’t observe this. He executed it.
Before the Magic Kingdom’s tax department, Chris built his professional foundation at — an award-winning Ohio-based accounting and advisory firm with an 80-year track record of serving privately held businesses. AGP was so good at what it did that , a Top 20 national firm with $600+ million in revenue, acquired them in 2024. At AGP, Chris performed financial statement audits for manufacturing companies, construction firms, and professional services organizations. He learned how real businesses operate: the messy books that nobody wants to talk about, the tax surprises that cost owners sleep, the partnerships that fall apart because nobody structured the financials properly.
That combination — Disney’s corporate tax sophistication plus AGP’s hands-on private business audit experience — is something you cannot find in another accountant in St. Petersburg. It’s not even close.
So why St. Petersburg?
Because Chris saw something that 50 other accounting firms in this city were blind to.
St. Petersburg is one of the fastest-growing LGBTQ+ communities in the United States. Perfect 100 on the HRC Municipal Equality Index every year since 2014. The Tampa Bay LGBT Chamber represents 600+ businesses across seven counties. LGBTQ+ purchasing power in this region is estimated at $9 billion. People are relocating here from Portland, New York, and San Francisco specifically because St. Pete combines inclusion with livability.
And yet — not a single accounting firm in this city had the foresight to build specifically for this community. No NGLCC certification support. No SBE procurement guidance. No financial services designed for LGBTQ+ partnership structures.
Chris didn’t see a gap. He saw a canyon. And he built the bridge.
