The rigors of college have a way of honing ambition. But Lori F. Reiner’s was already plenty sharp. As a junior at Abraham Lincoln High School, in Northeast Philadelphia, Mrs. Reiner applied for early admission to Temple—and was accepted. Her two older sisters attended Temple as did a few friends; this cushioned her jump. But, more than anything, she says, “I felt ready.” Mrs. Reiner displayed her determination again a few years later. This time during her junior year when she sought and secured an internship with a Center City-based accounting firm that was a predecessor to EisnerAmper, for which she has been a partner for the last 18 years. Even her major, accounting, was a pursuit of pure ambition. Mrs. Reiner excelled at math in high school and assumed accounting would be a natural fit, even though she had no exposure to it prior to her first class at the Fox School of Business. “But, I really liked it,” she says. “And my math skills did come in handy.” It didn’t take her long to get her footing. And once she earned entry to Temple’s chapter of the prestigious Beta Alpha Psi, the international honor society for accounting, finance, and information systems students, her career began to unfold before her eyes. “To have that kind of access to the business community was huge for me,” Mrs. Reiner says. “I came from a family that had no knowledge of that world. My parents didn’t go to college. So, it changed my ability to get a good job.” It also underlined the value of networking at an impressionable stage of her professional development. Upon graduation, Mrs. Reiner joined the Center City office of Laventhol & Horwath, once the country’s seventh-leading accounting firm before it filed for bankruptcy in 1990. Shortly after her start there, a partner advised Mrs. Reiner that community outreach would become part of her work responsibilities, and he volunteered her for the Jewish Federation of Greater Philadelphia. As a member of its Young Leadership Council, Mrs. Reiner was surrounded by lots of other promising, ambitious professionals who ultimately became friends. Over the years, these friendships evolved into the partnerships that became the basis for her accounting practice. The council’s work also reinforced her inherent civic mindedness. Over the last three decades, Mrs. Reiner’s investment in the Greater Philadelphia community has been deep and enduring. She sits on the boards of the Greater Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce, the Committee of Seventy, the Abramson Center for Jewish Life, and the Alliance for Women Entrepreneurs. She’s a former co-chairman of the United Way of Greater Philadelphia and board member of the Jewish Federation of Greater Philadelphia. In 2017, she was presented with the “Take the Lead” award by the Girl Scouts of Eastern Pennsylvania in honor of her example. In 2013, Mrs. Reiner was named Partner-in-Charge of EisnerAmper’s 175-member Philadelphia office—and, in accepting, became the firm’s first woman partner-in-charge. Her first order of business: relocating the office to One Logan Square in Center City, which bolstered EisnerAmper’s regional presence. Mrs. Reiner hosts accounting students from the Fox School there on occasion, though it doesn’t seem to keep her from visiting the campus any less often. Between recruiting and speaking, she’s been a fixture since her graduation. “It’s just the way that I’ve grown my career,” she says. “I live a pay-it-forward life. I felt like I benefited from that at Temple.”

Temple University Degree
Bachelor of Business Administration ’86, Fox School of Business

Temple University Awards & Affiliatons
Accounting Achievement Award in Public Accounting, Fox School of Business, 2017

What I wanted to be when I was 20 years old
Internships were nonexistent then, but I took the second semester of my junior year off and interned at a firm that’s now EisnerAmper. It was during the busy season, so it really helped me understand what public accounting was like. And when I resumed my coursework, I did so well. Everything made so much more sense to me once I had the chance to apply it. So, at 20, I was figuring out that I really wanted to be a public accountant.

Best piece of advice anyone ever gave me
When I returned to EisnerAmper, one of the partners, a tall, imposing guy who I hadn’t seen since my internship several years earlier, approached me and said, “Don’t get lost. We’re not that big, but we’re big enough. Make sure people know who you are.”