Curiously, his first step toward this distinguished career began with a college job in the mail room at Union Carbide in San Francisco, and among his duties was delivering mail to the internal audit department. “I got to know some of the employees,” he recounts, “and they encouraged me to look into accounting as a profession.” As a math major he felt an affinity to the work they were doing. He recognized that “math is the language of accounting,” and saw that accounting offered something practical to do with the math he was studying.

After finishing college and a stint in the army, he went to work for the public firm of John F. Forbes & Co. “They were big in professional association involvement,” he comments, and so he joined CalCPA and became active in committee work for the San Francisco Chapter, eventually chairing the Accounting and Auditing Committee. During those years he was working his way up at Forbes. He made partner in 1977 and then opened an office for the firm in San Jose in 1981. When his firm won the engagement as auditor for CalCPA, he learned how the organization functioned, and he got to know its then executive director, Jim Kurtz.

He left Forbes in 1984 after it had begun a couple of merges to become part of KPMG, but he says his years in public practice taught him a great deal about the kinds of issues that engage many CalCPA members. He “did a lot of auditing and business consulting for small to medium-size companies,” and he worked with a lot of startup-ups. He became familiar with the challenges of organizing a business and raising capital.

After leaving Forbes, he spent a short time in private accounting working for a developer. This experience broadened his outlook, but, he adds, when Jim Kurtz invited him to join the CalCPA staff, it seemed like a natural move. He was familiar with the organization and its goals.

Then in 1985 when the professional liability insurance market was going through a hard cycle, he found himself the lead person in the formation of CAMICO and later its CEO. With these new responsibilities he knew he had to let go of his leadership role in the Group Insurance Trust and turned this responsibility over to its first executive director, Ken Ashcraft.

The years since have witnessed major changes for both the Trust and CAMICO, but as one of the few individuals who have served on the two boards, Dodsworth sees parallels. Both CAMICO and the Trust he says, “have similar purposes and structure. They are member-owned, and they both have robust loss-prevention measures. Both provide real advocacy for members, and they stretch to provide services rather than limit their coverage.” He adds that the two organizations also provide resource support and information to each other.

“It may be a cliché,” says Stu Weinstein, chair of the Group Insurance Trust Claims and Plan Design Committee, “but I have gotten a lot out of my relationship with CalCPA as member, and so serving as a trustee, and finding products and services that benefit members, is a great way to give  back.” To this he adds, “Its enjoyable to be associated with something as successful as the Group Insurance Trust has been.”

In addition to his spirit of service, Weinstein also embodies a broad range of professional experience that helps him understand the circumstances of different members. Having graduated with a degree in accounting from the University of California, Berkeley in the late 1960s, Weinstein started his career with a large regional accounting firm where he served until receiving his license. From there he moved to a consulting firm and then to a job as controller in McKesson Corporation’s International Division.

He comments that this experience was a unique opportunity

“to observe the  inside of a business from the client’s perspective, something that many CPAs don’t get a chance to do.”

He was fascinated to see how an enterprise is built, how people are responsible for the bottom line, and how they report to others. He was also engaged by the process of building appropriate controls. At the end of the day, however, he found the work repetitive, and he turned back to public accounting with renewed interest.

He joined his father, who had been working as a solo CPA, in forming Weinstein & Company, where he stayed until 1999. At that point he found himself ready for a more corporate structure and moved to Rooney, Ida, Nolt and Ahern, which had just opened a San Francisco office. He liked the fact that they had separate departments with specialties and that clients were shared.

This structure also meant that his clients had a place to stay as he transitioned into retirement during the years from 2005 to 2007. Currently he still provides occasional services as a consultant and also continues as a director of CAMICO Mutual Insurance Company.

As far as the GIT is concerned, however, he is very much engaged by the challenge of providing price competitive insurance services that most public sector members couldn’t get on their own.

“There is excitement,” he says, “in working on flexible plan designs that work well for small as well as large firms. The test is to create plans that people can afford while providing as many options  as possible.”

He is proud of the high level of service members receive and pleased at the broad geographic coverage provided by Anthem Blue Cross. The fact that the GIT’s only stakeholders are its member-employers makes it easier to achieve these goals.

As chair of the Claims and Plan Design Committee he is concerned with the marketing of the entire program as well as the details of its many plans, and he has advocated the addition of more marketing and sales options for ProtectPlus, including the use of a general agency and its associated brokers.

“This option allows us to reach more potential members than simply using the direct distribution option that has been used since the Trust was founded. In a profession with an aging population, one way to continue to keep costs down, is to reach out to more members so that our overhead  costs are shared over a broader base.”

For the future, he hopes to see more member firms enroll in ProtectPlus.

“Most firms who take the time to explore the GIT options find that it is a very competitive program, frequently better than what they have in place.”

Each podcast is between 5 and 10 minutes.  Short bit-sized bits of information on a wide range of topics.

Podcast Topics

Financial Elder Fraud and Abuse
CAMICO Employment Practices Liability Program
The View from the Back of the Bull – Bank Reconciliation Deficiencies
High-Risk Employees

See all Camico Podcasts