Elise Spencer spent thirteen years in higher education, teaching as Associate Professor of English and eventually leading curricular strategy as Department Chair and Chair of the Instructional Technology Committee at Prairie State College. That work demanded a particular set of skills: structuring complex material so it actually sticks, writing and communicating with precision, and thinking critically about whether instruction is producing real understanding or just the appearance of it.

Those are the same skills accounting firms need from their continuing education, whether they recognize it as the gap or not. Most CPE exists to satisfy a requirement. Elise designs it to do something harder: change how people actually work.

She brought that academic rigor into the accounting profession directly at CPA.com, the technology and innovation subsidiary of the AICPA, designing curriculum for firms and practitioners navigating the shift to Client Advisory Services. That work gave her a close view of where professional development in accounting tends to fall short: content that covers the requirement without building the capability, courses that get completed and forgotten. She's also worked inside a SaaS organization, which sharpened her understanding of how learning has to function and scale inside a fast-moving company.

Athena L&D works primarily with accounting and advisory services firms that are serious about developing their people, not just satisfying a continuing education requirement.

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