JENNIFER S. LEHMAN | CEO and managing partner, Hantzmon

If a time traveler had visited Jennifer S. Lehman during her early days as a first-generation college student at James Madison University to reveal she would one day be the first female CEO at Hantzmon Wiebel, a Charlottesville accounting firm founded in 1928, it likely would have been a shock. Initially, Lehman planned to become a nurse.

But that career path didn’t take. As she thought about what to do, Lehman remembered she’d enjoyed a high school accounting class and changed her major.

Not long after graduating in 1996, Lehman joined Hantzmon Wiebel. By 2007, the firm had promoted her to chief operating officer. For several years, she also served as co-partner in charge of the employee benefit plan audit practice.

As CEO and managing partner since 2017, Lehman enjoys the best of two worlds. “I get to serve both the firm and the clients,” she says.

As a firm leader, Lehman looks for ways to improve operational efficiency. She has also been credited with cultivating a family-first mindset by allowing flexible work arrangements and implementing paid maternity and paternity leave.

For clients, Lehman provides professional services in the areas of accounting and auditing, as well as individual and partnership taxation. In this role, she builds rapport as skillfully as she navigates spreadsheets.

“The best part of my job working with clients every day is the relationships that I get to build with them,” Lehman says.

2025 Virginia Women in Leadership Awards honorees