Meet Kelly ‘Dawn’ Moore (formerly Lopez) of Dwight Darby, New Principal at SBF
Whether it’s about office culture, leadership or the latest in good books, Dwight Darby’s Dawn Moore has plenty to share with her new colleagues.
Starting in January, our team will grow by 12 like-minded accounting professionals, thanks to our merger with South Tampa’s venerable Dwight Darby & Company. Leading the charge is Dawn Moore, whose nearly three decades at Dwight Darby has shown her every aspect of leading a firm and looking toward the future.
“The numbers are the numbers and we can work through those,” she said in a conversation just before Christmas, “but it’s about the relationship and the trust, really, that developed with our clients that has made our firm special. And I’ve seen that already with the SBF people too.”
Moore joined Dwight Darby in 1993, where she specialized in accounting and auditing with not-for-profit, automobile and insurance clients, among others. It was a welcome change from the Big Eight firm she’d worked at before, where there were so many layers between partners and clients. “Just like it takes a village to raise a child, it really takes the whole team sometimes to care for a client or work through an issue,” she said. “Nothing’s above or below someone here to get the issue resolved.”
Dwight Darby was ahead of the curve in a number of respects, notably on workplace flexibility. When Moore was pregnant in 1997, partner Wayne Bond invited her to write the firm’s flex policy, which is still in place. “If you have great employees, you need to trust them,” she said. “Giving them the flexibility to keep working is going to make them happier and more productive.”
But work doesn’t define everything about Moore, who was a partner at Dwight Darby and will now be a principal at SBF. For example, before she went back to school for a second bachelor’s degree, in accounting, she studied earth science, particularly the geology of the Appalachian Mountains. (She knows plenty of interesting geological facts: For example, the deep bedrock under Florida was part of Africa some 500 million years ago.)
Away from academic topics, Moore is a huge fan of beaches. Her favorite being Siesta Key. As a self-proclaimed book lover and exercise nut, she’s equally likely to be relaxing with great nonfiction or regularly exercising with her bootcamp group or racing through a mud-running course from time-to-time. What’s her greatest joy? Her favorite son, Andrew.
She is very excited for 2022, as she expects to see her clients more often, now that Spoor Bunch Franz is supporting more of the firm’s day-to-day tasks. “It’s always good to visit with our clients,” she said. “They really depend on us and depend on us meeting with them, holding their hand through certain transactional events in their life and in their industry.
