News Archive: Ed Fahey Profile - Golden Gate University School of Taxation

For Immediate Release:
November 01, 2008

Edward Fahey, CPA, President
Stockholder
efahey@rina.com
www.rina.com

As president and an audit partner at RINA Accountancy Corp., Ed Fahey heads one of GGU's most stalwart taxation families. After graduation in 1982 from the University of California, Berkeley, he was offered a job a RINA, which wsa then known as Ronney, Ida, Nolt and Ahern. In 1997, heleft to work for a client, Renwood Winery, where he was vice president of finance.
"It was fascinating working in the wine industry," he says. "We had a vineyard and acquired two more while I was there. I learned a lot about farming. Which was eye opening for a city boy from Oakland. It was a wonderful experience, but I missed the variety of serving clients in different industries, so I came back to RINA in 2000."
Fahey came to GGU to study investments with an emphasis in tax. He began classes in San Francisco while working in RINA's Oakland office, but was later transfered to Sacramento. "I finished my degree at Mather Air Force Base," Fahey says. "We had a pass to get on the base to take classes. In the summertime, a friend and I would get in a round of golf on the base's 18-hole course before our 6:30 class. We had our study sessions on the golf course."
"My GGU degree has severed me well," Fahey says. "It gave me skills and knowledge that serve entrepreneurs. As consultants, we apply business knowledge to business problems. I need to create the solution that meets the needs of my clients. My GGU degree helped me with this. It's my job to help identify opportunities for the firm and help people grow to fill them. It's rewarding to develop my people and see them grow.
About one-third of RINA's 80 employees have a degree from Golden Gate University, and RINA generiously created an endowed scholarship, in recognition of the firm's founders, for GGU accounting and tax students. "For us, it's an acknowledgement of the commitment of the founders to education and personal development," Fahey says, "Henry Rooney, one of the founders, deserves a lot of credit fo reminding us how you use education to improve skills and knowledge to better serve the community." - Kate McNulty