Lawrence F. Hackney, CPA
Originally from Ann Arbor, I left the cold and snow of Michigan in 1984 to head to Florida for my college education. While in Tallahassee at Florida A&M University, I decided to pursue a degree in accounting. I knew public accounting would provide a strong foundation upon which to build my career. After graduation in 1988, I joined the audit department of Touche Ross (Deloitte) in Dallas. After developing my skillset in public accounting, I took my talents “on the road” and joined the internal audit departments of Occidental Petroleum and then BFI. At BFI, I moved from internal audit to controller for one of its New York locations.
Though accounting is my core, I have always had an interest in the operational side of business. I transitioned from controller to regional operations and, finally, operations manager at that same New York location.
Having fulfilled my desire to gain operations experience, I then wanted to engage my entrepreneurial spirit and pursue my dream. This led me to move back to Houston and begin my practice L. Franklin Hackney CPA in 1995. My first client engagement helped define the direction of my services. That assignment was to work with the assistant controller of a hospital system in developing their annual budget for the next fiscal year. The project required gathering information from various data sources, performing trend analysis, and preparing reports for management. What would have normally been a very mundane process, became an opportunity to provide creative solutions for my client’s needs.
I was hooked. I knew that helping clients make sense of their data on a project basis was my true calling.
Word of my return to Texas got back to many of my Deloitte contacts in Dallas, who began to request my services. As requests built, it soon became apparent that I should return to Dallas, which I did in March 1997. After three years, I returned to Houston (to be closer to my wife’s family) and my practice has thrived since.
My client roster has ranged from hospital systems, large banking institutions and manufacturing with a very strong interest in oil and gas, waste management and the funeral home and cemetery services industry. Merger and acquisition activity have driven many of my current data solution requests from clients. At L. Franklin Hackney CPA, PLLC, I believe data is only data until analysis, logic, and critical thinking are applied. I provide data solutions.