Alston Accounting & CFO Services, a former division of Alston Consulting & Professional Development Group, was founded by Connie Alston.  Connie is a seasoned accounting professional with over 25 years of nonprofit and government accounting experience. 

Connie Alston is a highly accomplished professional with a B.B.A. in Accounting from Temple University, where she graduated cum laude after completing the rigorous degree program in just two years. While at Temple, Connie was the inaugural president of the Accounting Professional Society and an active member of Beta Alpha Psi, a national honor society. She even started a mentorship program that introduced Temple's National Association of Black Accountants chapter to Mitchell Titus, the preeminent minority-controlled accounting firm in the U.S. As a result of her academic performance, Connie was chosen as the commencement speaker at Temple's graduation. You can watch her inspiring speech here.

After graduation, Connie accepted a position with PwC (formerly Coopers & Lybrand), where she focused on auditing healthcare and religious organizations with budgets over $500 million. Her primary focus was assessing internal controls and providing compliance narratives for process improvements to clients. Connie left PwC to set up Ujima Academy, an educational facility in North Philadelphia that offered high-quality educational opportunities for families who lived in the Richard Allen projects and surrounding areas. While officially serving as the Chief Financial Officer/Chief Operating Officer, Connie personally taught GED classes, parenting courses, and financial management workshops. She also facilitated entrepreneurial workshops and personally funded startups for small disadvantaged teen businesses. Connie primarily hired staff from the neighborhood, with several later turning into entrepreneurs. For more than ten years, Connie established strategic partnerships with neighboring agencies like Congresso De Latinos, Philadelphia OIC, Concilio, Preschool Project, Mount Tabor AME Church, Community College of Philadelphia, and Ramonita de Rodriguez Library. Ujima Academy was profitable each year under Connie's leadership, and entrepreneurs throughout Philadelphia recognized her business accomplishments. As a result, Alston Consulting was born as a way for Connie to provide strategic and accounting support to businesses in need.

Later, Connie served as Vice President of Self-Sufficiency/Director of Finance for ACHIEVEability, a nonprofit housing corporation whose mission is to break the cycle of generational poverty. Connie led the charge over finance, operations, and programs, including social services, real estate sales, property rehabs, maintenance, and human resources. In addition, Connie and her 30-person ACHIEVEability team were responsible for 24-hour holistic care for approximately 275 formerly homeless individuals throughout the West Philadelphia area. During this time, Connie served on the Board of Philadelphia Presbytery Head Start Learning Tree and was also a member of the finance subcommittee.

After leaving ACHIEVEability, Connie served as the Chief Financial Officer for the Center for Building Strong Families, a multisite nonprofit whose mission is to empower individuals to improve their quality of life through education and enrichment opportunities. As the financial lead, Connie strategically grew the overall agency's service reach by more than 200% and the agency's partnerships by 40% in two years. Such partnerships included Communities in Schools, Temple University, Youth Empowerment Program, and Ferry Avenue Branch Library in Camden. The nonprofit also experienced profitable results each year under Connie's guidance.

Connie left the Center for Building Strong Families and moved to Des Moines, Iowa, where she worked for the State as an Assistant Controller for the Iowa College Student Aid Commission. Connie was responsible for implementing internal controls and establishing processes and procedures for $40.3 million in newly awarded grants, including a $16.8 million GEAR UP federal grant. In addition, Connie reconciled over $65 million in student loan forgiveness programs and trust accounts for the mid-west region. Overall, Connie directly oversaw over $100 million of State allocated funds. While living in Iowa, Connie maintained her Philadelphia-based consulting business via Internet services.

Upon returning to the Philadelphia area, Connie joined Zelenkofske Axelrod, a regional leader in nonprofit and government auditing services. Connie audited the Salvation Army, People for People, SPIN, SEPTA, Delaware Port Authority, and Bucks County Water, among other clients. She led on-site audits for clients with budgets up to $1 billion, guided clients around financial statements, prepared 990s, filed BCO-10 PA charitable applications, and composed and presented audit findings to client leadership.

After ending her auditing career, Connie became the Chief Financial Officer with Northern Children's Services, a nonprofit whose mission is to stabilize families and build stronger communities. As the financial leader of Northern, Connie worked to restructure the financially struggling agency. She also worked with the CEO to address the agency's liquidity issues and questionable going concern. While moving Northern toward sustainability, a more prominent nonprofit with a city-wide reach offered Connie a lead financial position. The confidential nonprofit was on the brink of bankruptcy and needed immediate support. Failure of the confidential nonprofit would affect tens of thousands of Philadelphians. While it was a hard decision, Connie left Northern and took the lead financial position with the confidential nonprofit.

Connie committed to strategically changing the financial trajectory of the confidential nonprofit, so she took a break from consulting. In Connie's first week in the position, she found that the agency had a negative $3 million net asset balance. The agency was factoring (selling their receivables) to stay afloat, so the cost of borrowing money was more than $500,000 per year. Connie proposed a strategic financial plan to the executive team that was immediately implemented. After two years of hard work, the agency experienced a profit. The negative net assets are now positive, and the nonprofit has a line of credit with a traditional bank. Recently, the nonprofit won a $1.5 billion contract after a battle with one of the largest agencies in the City!

COVID hurt the world's economy. So at the end of 2020, Connie retired from the confidential nonprofit to return to what she loves – consulting. Connie believes her work with nonprofits, educational institutions, and religious organizations will be more impactful post-Covid, servicing multiple clients simultaneously.

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