After a more than 30-year career in the accounting world, and having helped a pair of accounting firms beef up their local and national profiles, Scharrell Jackson is taking on a new challenge.
The Lake Forest resident in May was announced as the new chief operating officer for Lendistry, a business and commercial real estate lender based out of Los Angeles.
Lendistry ranks second nationwide in SBA Community Advantage lending, providing “responsible financing to small business owners and their underserved communities,” the company says.
“It’s a fabulous organization with an aggressive growth model,” Jackson said at the time of her hiring at the fintech. “We are moving at rapid pace and serving the community and [its] people by providing access to capital to all people.”
Pandemic Push
The minority-owned company, a member of the Federal Home Loan Bank of San Francisco, has been increasingly active during the pandemic.
It provided Paycheck Protection Program loans to small businesses in all 50 states and was selected by the State of California to administer the California Small Business COVID-19 Relief Grant Program, which distributed grants to small businesses that lost significant revenue during the pandemic.
Jackson comes aboard at a time of even more activity and a growing public profile for Lendistry.
In late April, the company announced it had been tapped by the Small Business Administration as the sole community partner to help administer $28.6 billion in Restaurant Revitalization Fund (RRF) financing established by the American Rescue Plan Act.
Lendistry said that the SBA is prioritizing the first phase of RRF funding “to restaurants and small businesses owned by women, veterans, and socially and economically disadvantaged individuals.”
“Among the biggest challenges the government has faced when it comes to administering COVID relief to small businesses is balancing the need to move quickly with the need to ensure money gets into the right hands,” said Everett Sands, Lendistry’s founder and CEO. “The Biden Administration is clearly focusing on ways to do just that, and it’s going to have a huge impact on businesses who need the help immediately.”
Squar, BPM Growth
The move is the latest chapter for Jackson, one of OC’s more prominent Black execs.
She spent 20 years at Irvine’s Squar Milner LLP, rising to partner, chief financial officer and chief operating officer. Jackson helped Squar make a name for itself via an aggressive acquisition push over the past decade, becoming the fourth-biggest accounting firm headquartered in California.
It was the largest accounting firm based in Orange County until 2020, when Squar joined Baker Tilly US LLP (see story, page 21). Baker Tilly ranks No. 7 on this week’s list of largest local accounting firms.
A few months before that deal was announced, Jackson moved to San Francisco-based BPM LLP where she became chief operating officer and a principal at one of the 50 largest accounting firms in the country.
The firm, which specializes in technology, real estate, nonprofits, and mergers and acquisitions, hired Jackson with a growth plan of its own.
BPM ranks No. 31 on this week’s accounting firm list, and its local office has more than doubled in size from when Jackson joined the firm in 2020.
Leadership in Heels
Jackson is well known in Orange County accounting circles. In 2011, she received a Women in Business award from the Business Journal.
She wears many hats. She is also founder and CEO of the Leadership in Heels women speaker series, through which she motivates, educates and equips women “to see themselves as unapologetic leaders.”
The latest COO position at Lendistry shows she practices what she preaches.
“I’m truly working in my passion and purpose, while using my business acumen to scale the organization, as we grow at a rapid rate,” she said at the time of her hiring.
