Asking questions is a big part of how Danielle Kimmell got where she is today.
“If you don’t ask, you’ll never know what you could have gotten,” says Kimmell, 34, a recently promoted partner at accounting and business advisory firm Bober Markey Fedorovich.
Asking questions helped her get the most out of her college classes. It’s helped her relationships with her mentors and protégés at her Akron-based firm. It also makes her a strong manager who communicates often and well with supervisors, subordinates and clients.
“I think she leads by example and by the power of persuasion,” says partner and CEO Richard Fedorovich. “She’d mobilize people to be responsive and get something done without having to hold a gun to their head.”
When working with and above others, Kimmell guides them through a project without doing the work for them, allowing them to finish the task feeling accomplished and more knowledgeable.
Kimmell, who joined Bober Markey Fedorovich in 2005 as a senior manager, credits her advancement to her open mind and her desire to lead workplace transformations. She’s led several of the firm’s technology upgrades, including a new Web portal project and conversion to a voice-over IP phone system. Change is vital for any company, though not always popular, she says.
“A lot of people don’t like to [change] because it can be considered risky, and it is like entering the unknown,” she says. “You never know what you might find when you head into a project for change.”
Kimmell is also unafraid to question herself. After arriving at Bober Markey, she engaged in a 360 evaluation, inviting co-workers above and below her to evaluate her performance so she could improve herself. She participated in the firm’s mentoring program and trained with Leadership Akron.
Self-improvement and hard work were ingrained in her from an early age. Her father put in long days as a blue-collar worker. “My dad never missed a day of work in his life other than when he was in the hospital,” she says.
Her parents, who didn’t go to college, “scraped the bottom of every piggy bank” to help her pay tuition at the University of Akron. Scholarships and work paid for the rest: In high school, she flipped burgers at a Burger King on the Ohio Turnpike.
“I’ve always been willing to put in the extra hours and the extra effort,” she says. That, she says, helped her go from “worker bee” to supervisor.
Her drive has impressed her peers — especially her female co-workers.
“The one thing I found very refreshing was how all the women in the office kind of rallied around me when they found out [about her promotion to partner],” she says. “It’s amazing. It’s kind of like a sorority where all these females are supportive of each other.”
Kimmell, the second female partner at Bober Markey, says she rarely looks at her career through the lens of gender.
“I’ve always taken an approach to not make being female an issue,” she says. Still, she says she drew inspiration from Cindy Johnson, the first woman to make partner at the firm, because of “everything she’s accomplished as a female” and her role as a “great ally.”
Helping in the community finishes off Kimmell’s rounded reputation. The United Way of Summit County named her its 2009 Young Philanthropist of the Year, recognizing her work with Project GRAD Akron, Habitat for Humanity and the West Hill Neighborhood Organization. She’s the board chair of Project GRAD, which mentors students in the Buchtel school cluster within Akron public schools to help them prepare for college.
“She’s a quiet leader,” says Project GRAD executive director Jacqueline A. Silas-Butler. “She just quietly and effectively gets the work done.” Often, at Project GRAD meetings, Kimmell will take complex, number-sodden information and relay a clear picture to everyone.
“My favorite stuff is actually rolling up my sleeves and getting dirty,” Kimmell says. For her, Keep Akron Beautiful and Habitat are fun and productive ways to be outside.
“You see her always out and involved in the community, out working and doing,” says Silas-Butler.
That’s also part of Kimmell’s approach to getting what you want and where you want to be. “You just always have to keep pushing,” she says.