A CPA’s Love for Basketball Benefits Kids With Special Needs

For the past 13 years, Melissa Soranno, CPA, has volunteered for the Challenger Division of the Toms River Basketball As­sociation (TRBA), facilitating basketball activities for children with special needs.

Melissa’s love for basketball started at age six. She went on to serve as team cap­tain of her eighth grade team, play center and forward in high school, and referee her town’s third grade girls’ basketball team.

When Melissa was in high school, her father and another TRBA board member spearheaded the Challenger program. They wanted to provide a much-needed basketball program for kids in the com­munity and for those with special needs. “They needed people to help, volunteer and coach. At the time, I was on the girls’ varsity basketball team at Toms River High School North. My dad was able to get permission from my coach to let the team volunteer for the program,” says Melissa. “To this day, the team still volunteers.”

Melissa even continued to volunteer while attending Rowan University. “I would come home every weekend to help out. I liked doing it. It was a lot of fun. And when I graduated college, I stuck with it,” says Melissa.

Today, Melissa works with students at TRBA who have developmental chal­lenges, ranging in age from four to 18. She shares that one of her favorite things to do is select Christmas gifts for the kids and have Santa Claus surprise them with the presents.

An Adapatable Approach

Melissa has developed an adaptable system to engage the kids. The partici­pants follow her improvisational lead by participating in scrimmages, drills and exercises that keep them active, engaged and having fun. Plus, she says the parents enjoy watching their kids let loose and enjoy themselves. But that doesn’t mean the role she plays doesn’t have its occa­sional difficulties: “The challenge is to get the kids focused. Sometimes they want to sit with their parents and it’s hard to keep them engaged. It’s about trying some­thing else. You can’t do the same thing for too long because they get bored. The hardest thing is just keeping them going for an hour.”

The Link Between Basketball and Accounting

Melissa’s approach allows her to thrive in the world of accounting. The adaptability skills she has honed while working with children who have special needs helps her manage the sometimes unpredictable world of accounting.

But Melissa didn’t always know she wanted to be an accountant. During high school and college, she did administrative work for a real estate development company. When management discovered that the bookkeeper was embezzling money, Melis­sa took over bookkeeping responsibilities. “I kind of stepped in as the accountant and helped uncover the money the previous bookkeeper took,” she says. This incident, along with taking business classes, sparked in Melissa an early fascination with forensic accounting.

She worked alongside the company’s public accounting firm to uncover the embezzlement scheme. At the end of the engagement, Melissa recalls, “The account­ing firm offered me an internship. I laughed at them saying ‘I don’t want to be an accountant!’” But she ended up accepting the internship, and she worked at the firm for seven years.

Now, Melissa’s accounting journey has taken her to Bessemer Trust Company where she serves as associate vice presi­dent and senior accountant. She continues to incorporate the ability to change things up with the kids in the basketball program and in her new role overseeing staff and advising clients.