2015 Trusted Advisers Legacy Adviser: John Wanamaker

It’s a little-known fact that John Wanamaker is an author. Maybe he doesn’t work with commercial publishing houses, but he and five others at BKD LLP literally wrote the book for the core cultural identity at the 12th-largest national accounting firm.

“The BKD Experience: Unmatched Client Service” is now in its third edition. Shortly after becoming a managing partner in 2004, Wanamaker was appointed to a small task force to develop this theme into an employee manual easily transferrable to some 2,250 employees across 34 offices.

“The book is provided to every new BKDer on their first day, and the contents of the book are used in client service training programs at all levels of the firm,” he says.

Wanamaker was suitable for the job given his two decades of experience serving BKD clients in the long-term care, rehabilitation agency, home health and hospice industries.

In the last 10 years, he’s transitioned most of his personal clients to other advisers, but Wanamker still holds on to a few. His hands-on work included audit, tax, Medicare and Medicaid cost and reimbursement consulting, strategic planning, third-party negotiating, feasibility studies, and consulting on payment and clinical/operational systems.

Now, he manages the Springfield, Branson and Joplin offices collectively known as BKD’s southern Missouri practice unit. While the company has grown annual revenue to $496.5 million in fiscal 2014, according to Inside Public Accounting, Wanamaker’s unit represents nearly $50 million in revenue. When he stepped in as managing partner, the unit was producing roughly $29 million a year.

“We have seen our clients continue to thrive even through the darkest years of the recession, and I like to think that we played a strong role in helping them navigate,” Wanamaker says of the unit’s 280 partners and 4,000 clients. “I am ultimately responsible for ensuring that we deliver on our firm’s promise of unmatched client service.”

In the community, the 1983 graduate of Missouri State University is past chairman of MSU’s College of Business Executive Advisory Council, and he’s co-chairman of the newly formed Downtown Council of Champions. He’s on the board for the Springfield Area Chamber of Commerce and Care to Learn, and he’s a member of the Springfield Barons Club, the World President’s Organization Springfield chapter and the city’s Enhanced Enterprise Zone board, an appointment by the mayor.

On a broader level, Wanamaker served in 2010 on the South-West Regional Planning Team for the Missouri Strategic Initiative for Economic Growth, the governor’s five-year plan, and he was a member of the Hawthorn Foundation and the Voice of Business for multiple years.

“I have always encouraged all of my partners, as well as our employees, to get involved in some form or fashion in a local community organization that they individually can be passionate about,” he says. “As a result, we have a significant number of BKDers that are engaged in our community and give back of their time.”