Bruce Phipps, CPP, Shifts Gears to Serve as APA’s 32nd President

Bruce Phipps, CPP, is officially off to the races and is now the APA’s newest President.

“Thank you from the bottom of my heart,” Bruce said after his swearing in ceremony at the APA’s Annual Business Meeting on May 4. “It will be an honor to serve you.”

It has been a road few have traveled, but one that started for Bruce way back in 1988 when a brochure came across his desk from a six-year-old organization known as the American Payroll Association (APA). It was reaching out to see if he wanted to join its membership.

“I thought, ‘This sounds like a good group of people to know,’” Bruce said. “After I joined, the first thing I did was volunteer for the Hotline Referral Service. The rest, as they say, is history.”

Thirty-three years later, Bruce has taken his seat at the top of the APA as its 32nd President. It’s a position he never thought he would attain, but one that he started thinking about a decade ago after he was named the APA’s Payroll Man of the Year in 2011.

“I think it was at that point when I started having additional aspirations,” Bruce said. “I wanted to know what else I could do to help the organization. People told me to keep doing what I was doing, and I would be rewarded.”

In the last 10 years, Bruce has put his whole heart into the APA and onto a new road to reach this pinnacle in his payroll career. He served as the APA Education Grant Committee Chair and as a Board of Advisors member for Region 3, along with volunteering on other committees. Currently, Bruce serves as Co-Chair of the State and Local Topics Subcommittee of the Government Relations Task Force (GRTF) as well as a volunteer on the Federal Issues GRTF Subcommittee, Electronic Payments Subcommittee, and many other APA committees and subcommittees. He was named to the APA’s Board of Directors and was tapped as an APA Vice President in 2016.

Over his 45-year career as a payroll professional, Bruce has worked in many different industries. From industrial valves to rehabilitation therapy services to database management, Bruce always considered his experience with different companies as a “selling point to prospective employers.”

Although the business of being President will be limited to an extent right now because of the pandemic, Bruce is looking forward to interacting with other payroll professionals as much as possible. While he may not get a chance to do that right away, he hopes that he will get some time to travel to present at chapter and statewide meetings.

“What I would like during my term as President is to get out to as many chapters as I can,” he said. “I want to make sure the members know that I’m an accessible President. I’m not going to be in the position of President just to be President.”