— Aprio
How Aprio Built Culture Into Its Growth Strategy
250 → 3,500+
Employees
$53M → $500M+
Run Rate
22+
Firms Integrated
Client Overview
Aprio is a leading business advisory and CPA firm with a long history of platform growth. Under CEO Richard Kopelman — who joined as a staff accountant over 30 years ago and has spent his entire career at the firm — Aprio transformed from a regional accounting practice into a nationally recognized professional services powerhouse.
Richard became managing partner and CEO in 2013. In 2017, he oversaw not only the firm's rebranding as Aprio but also the adoption of 31 Fundamentals that form the Aprio Way. Richard is a recipient of Forbes Magazine's Top 200 CPAs designation and was named one of Atlanta's most admired CEOs by the Atlanta Business Chronicle.
Why It Matters
Aprio's story is a proof point that culture isn't soft — it's a growth strategy. In an industry known for rotating managing partners, technical silos, and partnership politics, Richard made a deliberate decision to run Aprio like a business, not a CPA firm. The Aprio Way gave that business a behavioral backbone: a defined, practiced culture that scales across acquisitions, international teams, and rapid headcount growth without losing its identity.
The Challenge
When Richard became CEO in 2013, the firm had 250 people and a vision: build the best place to work in the profession. The firm had core values, but they were impossible to teach or replicate at scale.
As Aprio began acquiring firms, expanding into new markets, and growing headcount rapidly, the challenge became unavoidable: how do you maintain who you are when you're adding hundreds of new people every year across dozens of locations?
The challenge wasn't fixing a broken culture. It was operationalizing a great one — turning "this is how we do things" into something explicit, repeatable, and scalable.
Since we implemented the Fundamentals, we've grown from 250 people and $53 million in revenue to north of a half a billion dollars on a run rate basis with north of 3,500 people.
Aprio
Richard Kopelman
CEO
The Solution
In 2017, Richard encountered CultureWise founder David Friedman at a speaking engagement. Within minutes, he knew he'd found the system to bring Aprio's brand promise — "head and heart" — to life. The firm adopted 31 Fundamentals that now form the Aprio Way, practicing one each week across the entire organization.
What started as a culture initiative became an operating system. Today, the Fundamentals are woven into every dimension of Aprio's business:
- Every meeting opens with the Fundamental of the week
- New hires are introduced to the Fundamentals on day one
- Lateral hires and interns cite the Fundamentals as a top-three reason for choosing Aprio over other firms
- Acquisition targets receive the weekly Fundamental email before the merger closes
- The Fundamentals have been translated into Spanish for Aprio's 300-person team in Colombia
- Aprio's Philippines team holds contests where members name all 31 Fundamentals from memory — in order
"At the very first meeting we have with any potential merger or acquisition target, we give them a card showing them the Fundamental of the week and we talk about it for a couple of minutes."
— Richard Kopelman, CEOCulture as a Deal Filter
One of the most distinctive aspects of Aprio's story is how the Fundamentals have changed the way they approach M&A. In every first meeting with a potential acquisition target, Aprio introduces the Fundamental of the week — and uses the reaction as a signal.
Some firms recoil. Those conversations end. Others pull out their own values cards and start lining them up with Aprio's. Those are the deals that get done.
"I've been in meetings where it has landed very poorly and we've walked away from a number of transactions. On the flip side, I've been in meetings where firms pulled out their own Fundamentals and said, 'We do the same thing."
— Richard Kopelman, CEOLast year alone, Aprio integrated 600 people through mergers and acquisitions. Richard says the cultural piece has been one of the easier parts of their integrations — because by the time many firms officially join Aprio, their teams are already receiving and discussing the weekly Fundamentals email.
The Results
The Fundamentals have created a natural filter on both sides: they attract the right people and help the wrong ones self-select out. People who don't align with the Aprio Way don't stay — not because they're pushed out, but because a defined culture is incompatible with behavior that contradicts it.
Average tenure at Aprio now exceeds seven years — well above industry norms in professional services. The firm has been named to Glassdoor's Best Places to Work list, ranked #58 on USA Today's national Best Places to Work list, and earned Top Workplace Culture Excellence recognition. Richard and other Aprio leaders were named in Forbes Magazine's Top 200 CPAs list.
With investment partner Charles Bank now supporting Aprio's continued transformation, the firm is doubling down on technology, new service capabilities, and global capacity — taking the same defined, practiced culture that got them here into the next phase of growth.
Key Outcomes
- 10× revenue growth since adopting the fundamentals
- Culture used as a filter in every M&A conversation
- 600 people integrated via M&A in a single year
- Fundamentals cited as top-3 reason new hires choose Aprio
"The Fundamentals help people check if Aprio is a fit. People will not stay at a business where the culture isn't defined and is the opposite of how they behave."
— Richard Kopelman, CEOThe Culture You Need
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