Our founder
A century before RSM became the premier firm serving the middle market—joining the ranks of the largest assurance, tax and consulting firms—it was a seven-person firm in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, with a one-person satellite office in nearby Davenport.
The I.B. McGladrey Company was formed on June 1, 1926, when the partner in charge of the Cedar Rapids office, 43-year-old Ira B. McGladrey, purchased the two offices during a reorganization of the firm.
This was a remarkable achievement since just seven years earlier, McGladrey had arrived at his first day of work in a Des Moines accountant’s office with no college degree and no formal training in accounting. He was wearing the only set of formal clothes he owned—his U.S. Army uniform.
Before serving during World War I, McGladrey tried out a plethora of jobs, including farming, lumberjacking, schoolteaching, carpentering, cow punching, painting, plastering, railroad construction, general merchandising, revenue service, grocery store clerking, banking and railroad section work.
“Up until this time I had turned my hand to a great variety of occupations. I now made up my mind that I would get to be as good as I could at one thing and forget about everything else.”
In less than five years, McGladrey became a certified public accountant. By the end of a distinguished career that spanned more than three decades, he was a recognized leader in the profession and had advanced how accounting was practiced across the nation.
It was an impressive trajectory for a boy raised in a primitive cabin on his family’s Michigan homestead, where McGladrey’s parents instilled in him a strong moral code, an expansive outlook, a steadfast belief in responsibility and a deep commitment to encouraging others to succeed. These values remained foundational to the firm he formed and were sustained after his death in 1952.
