Blixy Taetzsch is the current AguaClara Reach Board Treasurer and works on various aspects of the organization from accounting and budgeting to planning and policy. A long-time volunteer for many organizations, Blixy supports and inspires ACR not only with her great insights and experience but also her kindness and desire to help others. To celebrate International Women’s Day, ACR volunteers interviewed Blixy about her role in ACR and what motivates her to lead a life of service. Thank you, Blixy, for continuing to #ChooseToChallenge with ACR.
Could you please introduce yourself?
I'm Blixy Taetzsch, I am an accountant. I'm also a certified public accountant. So, that means I worked in public practice long enough to get my license and also pass the state exam. So, similar, maybe to a professional engineer.
Where did you grow up?
Well, that's interesting, because I actually was born in California, in Burbank and Los Angeles County. But I grew up in New Jersey, primarily in a more urban area, not far outside of New York City. We moved a lot when I was growing up. I don't think I was in one school for longer than three years; that was the longest time I was ever in one public school.
I came to Ithaca to go to college, like so many of us do here. I went to Ithaca College and I never left. I got married and I actually live in a rural area outside of Ithaca on a dairy farm. My husband is a dairy farmer, so a very different life that I've had for the last 35 years than how I grew up.
How did you get involved with AguaClara?
That's sort of an interesting tale. Most of my working career I've been a volunteer for some organization in some capacity. Since I was maybe 22 I've been volunteering. Many of that volunteer time has been on boards as I got further in my career. And so I was on the Sciencenter board as a trustee and I met Mark Hurwitz there, who was an AguaClara board member. He knew my background in accounting and specifically nonprofit accounting. I specialize in nonprofit and government accounting and finance so he asked if I would help and he introduced me to Maysoon (May) Sharif [ACR founder].
I spent some time giving him some advice about starting a not-for-profit corporation because this was when AguaClara was first started and hadn't even gotten its not-for-profit IRS status yet. I got so excited about the mission of the organization that I agreed to join the board and become the Board Treasurer. I spent a lot of time with May in those days trying to learn about and understand the organization. So that's how I got involved; it's like, who knows who and Ithaca is a small area and there's a lot of people. It's sort of the same collection of people who serve on boards and you run into each other in different places.
As the treasurer, what does your day-to-day work look like for AguaClara Reach?
Well, since ACR is pretty much a volunteer run organization, as Board Treasurer, my work actually includes what one might think of as an employee's work too. I do all the accounting and bookkeeping taxes. I deal with employment, procedures, making sure we're good with insurance, and all the things we need to do to be compliant with labor laws and things like that. These things aren’t normally what a Board Treasurer would do but it's what I'm doing for ACR, because they need that and I know how to do these things. I also create financial statements and prepare the organizational tax returns which are the 990 and a state report you have to do for not-for-profits. It really is sort of my contribution, right, because otherwise you'd have to pay someone to do those things. Since I'm a CPA, I have the background and experience to do that.
And then of course as Treasurer I also work with budgeting. That's more of a collaborative process, whereas the accounting bookkeeping is sort of just something I just do. And then, as a part of the Executive Committee of the board, I also work with the board on policy, planning, hiring and all of those things. I just try to be available and help out as much as I can.
Sometimes committees will also invite me to their meetings, like the RIDE (Research, Invent, Design, Engage) Committee for example, because they want to know what I think about maybe a fee structure or how something would work from a financial or contractual perspective.
What I’ve found to be true working with ACR is that I'm often the only person who's not an engineer at meetings although that's changing a little bit more recently. I've learned a lot because everyone has such a different background, experience, and expertise. I've always got lots of questions about what things mean or how things work because you can't really help an organization financially if you don't understand what it is that they're doing and what they need. Part of being a good financial person is asking those questions.
What unique strengths do you think you bring to ACR?
I've worked in higher education for most of my career at the local community college at Tompkins Cortland County Community College (T3C) so I think my experience there in an academic setting is a strength. I know the educational process but also have financial insurance knowledge and all of that other background I think, which really brings just a lot of experience.
The fact that I've worked with a lot of nonprofit organizations, both as a volunteer and in the time when I was doing public accounting, is also helpful. I just know a lot of different organizations so I can look at them and say what are some best practices that we could learn from and help with outreach. I think my other strengths are just that I see the connectedness between things and how an organization might work and how the different pieces might support one another. And so my experience with organizations and organizational development, I think, is helpful.
Sometimes it helps that I’ve just been doing this a long time. I know there are a few of us on the board who are further in their careers, but there are a lot of people on the board who are earlier in their careers. All of that's great, but sometimes just having some of that experience or knowing where to find things is helpful. I love organizations with a social justice mission so I'm very personally interested in working with those kinds of organizations.
I'm interested in hearing about your commitment to service and what draws you to these organizations in general.
I think back to my first volunteer job. I worked as a credit counselor at family and children services in Ithaca working with people who were having issues with debt or other challenges financially. I was very young and sometimes it was challenging because people would look at me and try to figure out how in the world I was going to help them because I looked so young, but I did have that expertise and I learned a lot.
I guess I've just always been drawn to wanting to try to help other people in whatever way I could. It's a little harder when your background is accounting, right, how do you help people? But then I found myself in my public accounting career working with nonprofits, government, small government, education, and I thought, this is how I can help people. I can help organizations that help people. And I was drawn to TC3 because a community college is very much a social justice mission organization; it's access to education for everyone. And just knowing that I could work with students even if I was more of a behind-the-scenes person to make education possible for people who might not otherwise have it was a big, big deal for me. So that's how I ended up being more in service but I feel like it's something that I wanted to do since I was a child. I was always drawn to wanting to figure out how to help people who were suffering.
Do you have any personal stories about why providing people with access to clean water is important to you?
I guess I feel like meeting people's basic needs, meaning food, shelter, health, you know those basic things, are really important to me. I'm not sure that I was first drawn to AguaClara because I had so much passion around water specifically. I know that for a lot of the people involved that's been their whole focus, but for me it was more about improving people's lives. A lot of people don't have those very basic things that we just take for granted, or that I take for granted. ACR really aligned with that for me. So I don't know that I was drawn because it was water but when I found out what was happening I was like, this is awesome.
And I love science. When I first went to school I wasn't planning to be an accountant, I was planning to be an engineer. I was studying physics engineering but I found out quickly that it really wasn't for me and I changed paths a little bit but that doesn't mean that I've lost my love for science. So one of the organizations I still volunteer with is the Sciencecenter. I really feel like understanding how the world works and understanding science especially for women and girls, is really important. So, I've always been involved with organizations that are focused on education and learning.
And so it's not just giving people something they don't have. It's helping people have better lives but enabling them to do that themselves. It's about enabling people, as opposed to just doing something for them, helping them realize their own potential and accountability and helping them get the resources to do that if they don't have it.
What do you think are some influencing factors that have driven your career and outside of work choices?
Where I live, and my choice to stay in Ithaca had a lot to do with falling in love. I don't know how I fell in love with my husband, right. He's a farmer. He isn't going anywhere. I learned a lot about farming and the land and I found that I love to be gardening. I've always loved outdoor things but I love gardening and growing things. I really love the rural living and so in terms of my choices about where I am, it probably had more to do with who I'm with.
But in terms of helping people and picking things, it's really about people. I just like relating to people. I would consider myself introverted which may be surprising to some, but I'm more of a relator so one-on-one or in small groups I usually feel pretty comfortable. I just learn so much just from those interactions with people and I really genuinely believe people are basically wonderful for the most part. I like to see the best in others and I tend to focus on that, which sometimes others think is dangerous but that's just who I am.
Who is one of your role models and why?
My mother is a role model because she is one of the least judgmental people I know. She just takes people as they are, and has pretty strong ethics around that. I learned that growing up so I learned not to be judgmental. In that sense, she's a role model or she has been for me. She's a writer and artist, so does very different things.
Could you talk a bit about who you strive to be through your life philosophies?
I will share a couple of things that I have found really helpful to me. I'll refer to a book called The Four Agreements. It's something that I strive towards because we never get there but, you know, the idea of doing your best, not taking things personally, being impeccable with your words, and not making assumptions. So those are the four agreements. They are very simple things but they're really hard to do. And again, it's really a lot about not only how you relate to others but how you relate to yourself, how you talk to yourself.
So that's really important to me. And then I think some philosophies that you might think of as maybe Buddhist philosophies, but they're probably not uncommon in many ways of thinking or faith based thinking, is just about having that beginner's mind and just sort of trying to love the people around you and not having in mind necessarily about who somebody is, and being open and even when it's uncomfortable, trying to listen and understand where other people are coming from.
They're related, but you know just really trying to love people, even when they're doing or saying things that maybe aren't as lovable and trying to understand and doing the same thing for yourself. Because it's really hard to be open to others or loving to others if you can't, you know, forgive yourself too and understand that you have to be kind to yourself. So none of those things are easy to do. So that's kind of what I strive for.
Is there anything else you’d like to add specifically related to International Women’s Day?
At this juncture, some of the conversations I'm having with some of the women professionals that are colleagues on the board with me, lead me to believe that the workplace hasn't changed dramatically from what I was operating as a professional in my career. Things are challenging sometimes, and it is still difficult for women in particular, I think, and women minorities, even more so, to excel in fields that are professions like engineering, accounting, legal, those that have tended to be dominated by the majority culture. I guess I thought things had changed more since I was first in my career and had some experiences that were maybe a little unsettling. That is why I left public accounting and went to work for community college, which is a much more supportive environment for me. And I'm just slightly disappointed to hear that maybe that hasn't changed as much as I thought.
I would just encourage people to keep on with it and keep your values and don't compromise and if you're not comfortable in the place you are to seek out someplace where it’s better and a good fit. I don't think someone should compromise their personal values just for a job. I have found myself facing those issues from time to time at various points in my career and it's hard. It's really hard sometimes. So I just want to say that from my perspective of having done this for 35 years and having been quite young when I started, younger than normal. I started college when I was 16, so it was not only difficult as a woman but it was difficult because I was young and I also looked really young. I remember working at a school, a public school, and having a child walk up to me and say, “Are you a grown up? Are you a kid?” I was performing an independent audit there as a professional, so yes. I wasn't offended because it was a little boy curious about who I was and what I was doing there but those are all challenging things.
Thank you, Blixy! ACR is lucky to work with you.
Interviewer: Melissa Louie
Transcriptions: Melissa Louie
Interviewed: March 2021
Author: Melissa Louie