Dean Litsas has a mind for numbers and a memory for movie and TV quotes. From Simpsons to Star Wars, the phrases from the big and small screen are embedded into his stream of consciousness and filter into everyday conversation. When he’s not reciting snippets of 90s movie scripts, he’s obsessively describing a newly discovered spreadsheet function with his wife, who once pretended to be interested in the topic.

Passion for data and stories means Dean is a perfect match for his role at FCPC Group. Analyzing numeric nuances gives Dean an edge in handling FCPC clients’ books, where business and family life always cross within their personal plot twists.

Dean can detect patterns and formulas for most things, and he puts his heart into bringing order, peace and levity to everyday moments – including his own family life. From 6:30 am to bell time, Dean is the morning house manager and shuttle driver packing his school-aged kids to their respective destinations, and clocking into the FCPC office so that he can unburden clients of their accounting headaches and give them back their mental energy for their bigger priorities in family and business.

Knowledge of each client’s big picture enables Dean to anticipate needs and give proactive accounting advice. Although as a CPA he is trained to keep his head in the books, a decade in public practice and oil and gas was long enough, and he gets more satisfaction in the boutique accounting environment of FCPC Group where he can get to know the people he’s serving as he’s solving their problems.

Dean is also an optimist. Regardless of history, each Superbowl he remains hopeful that data analysis will bring him favour when it comes to winning the family football pool. In spite of Dean’s elaborate spreadsheet and statistics modelling, the game and its variables can’t be predicted by a formula, he admits. Each year friendly email banter with in-laws, cousins, and NFL superfan uncles simmers into a boiling rivalry with family across Canada as Dean hopes to earn bragging rights and the pool. Inevitably a newbie who knows the least about players and teams cashes in with beginner’s luck, he says. He’s not a fortune teller, but he’s claimed the prize a few times to spur his optimism every year.