Accountant Spotlight: Nancy McCullough at e2E

Our Accounting Spotlights highlight inspirational leaders in the profession who are making a difference for their clients and community. Know someone who deserves to be featured? Submit a nomination.

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In our latest Accountant Spotlight Series, we're thrilled to introduce Nancy McCullough, Founder & CEO of e2E. Her story is one defined by teamwork, passion, and purpose. 

Turning purpose into profit

For Nancy McCullough, mathematics has always presented itself as a puzzle. By describing patterns, relationships, and regularities among numbers, equations, and structures, it provides insight into how the world works. As Nancy’s accounting degree introduced her to the world of finance and business, her fascination with this puzzle grew, opening her eyes to the questions of why businesses start, how they grow, and what drives profitability.

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Beginning her 30+ year journey at Ernst & Young LLP, Nancy had an early up-close view of entrepreneurial organizations. Following several accounting, audit, and finance roles in various industries, Nancy returned to the entrepreneurial world by joining the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, one of the nation's largest private foundations dedicated to improving communities by advancing entrepreneurship and improving the education of children and youth. 

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Nancy’s time at the Kauffman Foundation galvanized a strong belief in the power of a well-defined purpose and mission. As she shared, “After all, a business isn’t just a commercial undertaking; it should be a catalyst for success, inspiring people, and creating a positive impact on communities and society.“ In 2013, Nancy decided to leverage her years of experience in accounting, finance, and business development to launch her own professional services firm, e2E. Its mission is to assist small, growth-oriented businesses in their journeys of going from entrepreneur to enterprise. 

Solving the unique challenges of small businesses

What started as an idea at Nancy McCullough’s kitchen table has evolved into a team of more than 40 like-minded professionals, serving close to 100 growing businesses. For Nancy, this collective mindset is integral to the company’s founding values. “The common thread is always our outstanding teamwork—a value we call e2WE,” she explains. “I’m always amazed at our team’s passion and willingness to come together to make things happen for our clients in impossible situations.” 

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The team helps both nonprofit and for-profit clients navigate their business challenges. For e2E’s nonprofit clients, optimizing for an efficient financial statement is the central aim, meaning that critical roles such as accounting, bookkeeping staff, or human resources are often luxury roles for the organization. Comparatively, for-profit commercial clients often cannot justify the cost of additional hires for these roles, resulting in limited internal expertise and capacity for vital functions. The impact of these constraints on clients is extensive, from the timeliness of basic finance functions to future planning, opening the door for e2E to be a trusted partner in solution design. 

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Positioning technology as a competitive advantage

As e2E is a small firm, the use of smart technology is instrumental, as is the integration of these various technologies. By integrating its suite of solutions, e2E is able to streamline operations, improve efficiency, enhance accuracy, and improve the client experience. “Ultimately, we view the use of technology as a competitive advantage in today’s digital landscape,” Nancy states. 

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When it comes to finance automation, Nancy shares, “We recommend Ramp to nearly every client we work with for several reasons. Ramp offers such a diverse range of functions that it can address a number of use cases. Ramp’s expansive solutions and ease of use make it easy to adopt, dramatically saving time and providing the ability to manage businesses more efficiently and effectively.” She explained, “We also greatly appreciate Ramp’s inherent risk controls and the OCR functionality that improves accuracy and creates efficiencies for our team. This allows us to focus more on analysis and results rather than data entry for our clients.”

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Delivering value by becoming an extension of the client

e2E has the distinct privilege of working with small businesses averaging less than 100 employees across a broad range of industries and regions. It has a special niche in the technology and renewable energy sectors in particular. 

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The value provided to clients, however, is independent of the industry or coast. e2E prides itself on the ability to provide resources across a range of functions, expertise, and skill areas. “From accounting specialist, accounting consultant, and CFO consultant or controller to payroll and HR managers, we surround our client with the necessary resources, processes, and capabilities they seek and deserve,” shares Nancy. e2E is able to integrate with its clients’ teams, effectively identifying and deploying exactly the right solutions to fit their needs. 

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A non-profit client that provides global lifesaving care recently experienced e2E’s holistic approach when their in-house bookkeeper and finance manager gave unexpected notice. “The person in this role gave a customary two-week notice, but their departure left the organization in a bind. How do they find a quick solution? What about the institutional knowledge that comes with someone in this role?” shares Nancy. e2E quickly assessed the organizational needs, put together a team, and ensured continuity of service. By embedding themselves into the nonprofit’s team, the e2E team not only helped maintain success, but provided critical segregation of duties and  check-and-balance capabilities as well. “As a result of our support, they were still able to follow through on a fundraising event, launch a mission trip, and the Executive Director was able to go on paternity leave with peace of mind.

Entrepreneurship as a catalyst for success

Nancy’s presence as a leader is inspired by her passion for helping others realize their own potential. Nancy is deeply dedicated to helping small businesses achieve their dreams, seeing their success as central to her own.

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Outside of work, Nancy’s time is dedicated to her family, friends, church, and travel. Inspired by the lead pastor of her church, Rick McGinniss, she finds grace and wisdom from entrepreneurs in the faith-based community. This year, Nancy traveled to Scandinavia to celebrate her son’s high school graduation, as well as to New Orleans to celebrate her 30th anniversary with her husband. She’s also planning to embark on an annual trip with ten sorority sisters to celebrate 35+ years of friendship. Extending the same values of empowerment and curiosity for business to her personal life, Nancy feels blessed to have the opportunity to celebrate these special moments by exploring new places.

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At Ramp, we celebrate Nancy’s dedication to achieving growth by staying true to the ethos of teamwork, passion, and purpose. 

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