The original practice is almost thirty years old. The firm that carries its work forward, Fisher, P.A., has existed under that name since October 2014, when Emily Fisher took over an established Dilworth accounting practice through a succession plan and set about, in her words, building a certified public accounting firm for the future.
Twelve years later that firm has a headquarters on East Boulevard, a second office in Wilmington and a founder who took an unusual road into public accounting.
It started with a career change
Emily Fisher came to accounting from two other lives. The first was corporate finance. The second, which the firm’s own history describes as an entrepreneurial period in the wine and food world, is the one that shows in how the practice talks to its clients. She transitioned into public accounting in 2007, according to the firm, and spent the following years inside a Charlotte practice founded decades earlier.
When that practice’s founders put a succession plan in place, Fisher was the one who took it on. In October 2014 the firm became Fisher, P.A., and she became its principal and business advisor. She holds two degrees from UNC Charlotte, in 2010 and 2013, and the university’s alumni association lists her among its Niners in business.
The people behind it
Fisher is president and owner, and the firm is led alongside Brendan A. Garay, CPA, according to a business directory profile. Kristen Shiring, a CPA and senior tax advisor, became the firm’s public face during the pandemic, when Axios profiled its work helping Charlotte businesses file for small business loans and tax credits and wade through what she called a constant flood of new information.
The big thing, Shiring said then, is that we call it a partnership. Every business is different in what it needs, and the firm customizes its work to match. That is a claim every accountant makes. The firm’s version is specific: monthly accounting packages, outsourced CFO work, business advisory and tax compliance for what it calls middle market businesses, their owners and their families, alongside complex individual returns.
What it does now
In July 2026 the firm announced a Wilmington office, opening in September in a 10,000 square foot flex building the firm built, according to the Wilmington Business Journal. Fisher said the coastal office was more than a second location, a long term commitment to the businesses driving southeastern North Carolina’s growth, and that the region deserved the sophisticated accounting and advisory services of a metropolitan market with the attention of a local firm. Nicole Stokes leads the Wilmington operation, and the firm expects to add ten to fifteen jobs there over three to five years.
The Charlotte office at 1108 East Boulevard remains headquarters. The firm’s hourly rate is listed at around $300, its team at fewer than fifty, and its focus on business owners instead of volume tax preparation. Fisher has said the firm measures its success by the success of its clients and its team.
The firm’s approach to business clients is built around what it calls proactive work for the middle market: outsourced accounting that a growing company can hand off entirely, cash flow and sales forecasting, gross margin analysis, payroll, banking and loan packages, and what the firm’s service list bluntly names business emergencies. Fisher has said the firm provides a platform for clients to use technology to improve communication and reporting while the firm drives the strategy that adds value and increases margins.
The Wilmington office is staffed in part by relocation. Juan A. Pagán-Gonzalez, a CPA from the Charlotte headquarters, moved to the coast to help establish it, and the firm has said the two offices will operate with close collaboration and operational synergy. Fisher told the Wilmington Business Journal that the coastal region was fueling southeastern North Carolina’s growth and deserved a local firm with metropolitan capabilities. That is the same argument she made for taking over a Dilworth practice in 2014.
The firm’s public face has stayed consistent: a photograph of Fisher on the Wilmington announcement, Shiring in the Axios profile, a small team on East Boulevard whose hourly rate and staff count are published where a client can find them. For a business owner choosing an accountant, that transparency about who does the work and what it costs is a useful place to start, and it is the thing the firm’s clients describe most often.
Why it matters
Succession is the quiet crisis of small accounting practices. Founders retire, and the clients who trusted them for twenty years get a letter. The Dilworth practice that became Fisher, P.A. avoided that by planning for it, and the person it planned for was someone who had run a restaurant business and knew what a cash flow problem looks like from the inside.
The firm now serves two ends of the state from a Dilworth address and a coastal one. The wine and food years are a line in the founder’s biography. The clients who arrive with a first year of two state returns tend to find they were the useful part.