Genevieve B. Burns

CPA

Partner-in-Charge, Not-for-Profit Practice

As Audit Partner and leader of Blackman Kallick’s Not-for-Profit Practice, Gen Burns brings a wealth of experience to the exempt-organization community in the Chicagoland area and beyond. Her team serves social services agencies, arts and cultural organizations, trade and professional associations, foundations, and private schools.

Gen is dedicated to helping not-for-profit organizations achieve their missions by:

• Ensuring audits and other compliance reports are completed efficiently and timely, freeing the organization’s time and energy for serving its constituents
• Overseeing the preparation of high-quality, transparent financial statements that meet the requirements of lending institutions and donors
• Reviewing finance and audit committee charters and verifying that those committees are fulfilling their duties
• Providing guidance on fraud risk assessment and board governance issues

Gen sees herself as a connector and educator — gathering and sharing leading practices from a wide range of not-for-profit managing directors, CFOs, board members, and staff. She is an integral part of Blackman’s annual roundtables for medical associations and social service agencies, where CFOs and other financial professionals network and share ideas and resources with their peers. Gen and her team members also personally research accounting, tax, and economic developments that affect the not-for-profit community, and then they communicate the impact of those developments through one-on-one meetings and email alerts. 

In her role as client advisor, Gen is constantly in touch with her clients about important decisions ranging from hiring a new finance manager to forming a reimbursement policy. She is exhilarated by the opportunity to work with genuinely caring people doing good work, and she gains tremendous satisfaction from seeing the difference that her clients make in the lives of those they serve.

Credentials and Professional Involvement

Gen’s dedication to the not-for-profit community goes further than her client work and includes speaking and volunteer activities. 

She is a frequent speaker for organizations such as CPAs for the Public Interest and the Donors Forum of Chicago on such topics as budgeting, cash-flow projections, and analysis of financial statements. She also is a member of the Legislative Committee of Illinois’s Charitable Advisory Council, the audit committee of the Oprah Winfrey Foundation, the Association Forum of Chicagoland, and the American Society of Association Executives. Gen also is a founding member of Blackman’s Women’s Initiative, and she leads the firm’s Environment and Community Outreach Committee, which strives to constantly improve the environmental and social impact that the firm’s decisions have on the community.

Her past positions include chairperson of the Not-for-Profit Committee of the Illinois CPA Society and member of the Preserving the Public Trust Initiative Task Force of the Donors Forum. A member of the American Institute of CPAs and Illinois CPA Society, Gen earned a BBA in accounting from the University of Illinois at Chicago.

News about Gen Burns

• Burns Named 2009 'Woman to Watch' by Illinois CPA Society