Patricia Smerdzinski

As Gross Mendelsohn’s controller, Pat Smerdzinski oversees the firm’s internal accounting department, which handles payroll, accounts payable and accounts receivable.

Pat works closely with the firm’s management team to monitor the firm’s finances. Pat also handles billing inquiries from clients, prepares the firm’s monthly financial statements and handles banking and insurance issues.

Tax season is Pat’s favorite time of the year. It’s during this time that she prepares the firm’s submissions to three comprehensive annual surveys of national and international accounting firms. These surveys afford Pat the opportunity to objectively analyze the firm’s financial condition and progress in comparison with similar-size firms around the country.

In addition to her passion for the firm’s financial health, Pat is also passionate about men’s college basketball, and is the firm’s bracket manager for the annual NCAA men’s college basketball tournament pool. March Madness is synonymous with tax season and basketball.

Just for fun

• A self-described “travel and museum nut,” Pat has gone to the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, the Louvre and Grand Palais in Paris, the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow and the State Hermitage in St. Petersburg, Russia. With a love for music, Pat has also visited The Hard Rock Café in the three of the four cities. She hopes that St. Petersburg will add a Café by the time she visits there again in 2012 so she can add to her Hard Rock Café T-shirt collection.
• Pat has taken Berlitz language courses in French and German. She studied Spanish in school. Her best-known phrases in all three languages are: “I am lost,” and “Where is the bathroom?”
• Pat believes she is the last person in the U.S. not to have a cell phone.