When Scott Steffens (BUS ’89) retired from his partner role at Grant Thornton last summer following a 34-year-career in public accounting, he had time to reflect on the forces that shaped his life. Over and over again, his mind returned to two entities: his stepfather and DePaul University.
His stepfather was a CPA who ran an accounting business out of the family’s home in suburban Riverside, Illinois. In high school, Steffens helped him bind reports, while working on projects that gave him insights into the world of accounting. It was a good fit for a teenager with an entrepreneurial spirit. At that time, Steffens already had a business mowing lawns and buying and selling baseball cards; he’d long kept a ledger. “It was an easy introduction to say, ‘OK, this is what I want to do,’” he says. “I knew it was going to lead to a job at graduation and provide a good foundation for some future in business.”
Steffens was a basketball fan growing up in the 70s and 80s, and DePaul University captured his attention with its successful athletics programs. So when he learned that the university also had an accounting program, including the recently created Strobel Accounting Honors Program, his college decision was made. “Sign me up!” he recalls thinking.
Steffens was a first-generation college student, in one of the very first cohorts of the Strobel Accounting Honors Program. He commuted to campus while living at home, and even with the long train rides, he loved every minute of it. His freshman year, he relished the opportunity to balance his school work with a job at DePaul managing the women’s volleyball team (he’d played volleyball in high school). But his sophomore year, his stepfather became ill and needed surgery. Steffens contemplated dropping out of the university to help the family. Before making any decisions, he spoke with Robert Peters, the then-director of the Strobel Accounting Honors Program, who spoke with other faculty and staff and intervened. “They found money to keep me in that sophomore year,” Steffens says. “DePaul, true to the Vincentian values, found a way to keep a student in.” He knew he would never forget it.
After graduating, Steffens launched into his career, working his way up to partner at Deloitte & Touche before moving to Grant Thornton in 2009, where he was most recently the not-for-profit practice leader in the Washington, D.C. office serving non-profits, higher education and professional organizations, before he retired and moved back to Chicago.
Through it all, he’s given back in countless ways to DePaul, participating in boards and councils, including Ledger & Quill, the Dean’s Advisory Council and the Athletic Advisory Council. While at Deloitte, he helped establish the Deloitte Distinguished Professorship, and was also instrumental in establishing the Robert M. Peters Endowed Scholarship in honor of his mentor. And in 2009, he started the Steffens Family Diversity Endowed Scholarship to encourage diverse students to consider a career in public accounting. Steffens says he’s made it his mission for decades to hire and mentor a more diverse workforce. With the scholarship, he’s also supporting the education of more diverse students bound for the field.
Most of all, he says, the scholarship allows him the honor of paying forward the same opportunity he once received, helping to cover some of the costs of college and paving the way to a fulfilling career. “If I hadn’t stayed at DePaul, I’d never have gotten my first job and my career wouldn’t have been the same. It was all because of DePaul being DePaul,” he says. “I certainly appreciate that, and it forever solidifies me as a donor.”
By Kate Silver