Neo.Talent: Account Manager Jo Bryant Knows Everyone in Tax

Early in her sales career, Neo.Tax account manager Jo Bryant, sold insurance with a Lloyds of London syndicate and then dictation equipment to lawyers and doctors.  It was when she joined RIA in 1998 (a division of Thomson) that she learned the world of taxes. This was a decade before RIA/Thomson would acquire Reuters and become the large multi-national we know today.  “This was in an age where traditional research in legal and in tax and accounting was done with a wall of books. Web research was just beginning and Thomson Reuters — which was still called RIA — was early to the digital game. So it was a very exciting time.”

Most people don’t think of the beginning of digitized tax solutions as “a very exciting time,” but that’s the thing about Jo Bryant: she loves the tax space. And her enthusiasm is infectious. Not long after RIA went online, Jo explains, they acquired Fast-Tax, a platform for direct tax solutions for income tax and 1099s. “All of a sudden, overnight, I was working alongside reps selling income tax compliance solutions, and I was completely head over heels in love with it,” she says, grinning. “It was just exciting technology.”

Jo spent the next 20+ years at Thomson Reuters, building lasting relationships with tax departments across the country. She knew who cared about state tax vs. federal tax. She knew the right time of the year to start conversations with each client. She knew everyone’s kids’ names and favorite restaurants and sports allegiances. “We are lucky enough to work in a business where it’s a tight community. People begin their careers in taxes, and they usually don't leave, so everybody is really connected,” she says. “It gives you an opportunity to become part of the tax community as a vendor, because if you are providing a trusted service, then they're going to lean on you, and they'll lean on you for a very long time.”

So, it was a shock to some when Jo announced in May that she was leaving TR to come work at a startup called Neo.Tax. She explains that though she’d seen dozens of high-tech tax solutions come and go during her two decades at TR, Neo.Tax just instantly clicked for her. “Shortly after the agreement between Thomson Reuters and Neo.Tax, allowing TR reps to resell the Neo.Tax solution, Neo.Tax CEO Ibrahim reached out,” Jo says. “He introduced me to the solution and the team, and I was just very impressed by the vision, by the professionalism, and by the intellectual nature of all the team members. Right away, I was like, ‘That’s the one to watch!’”

A few months later, Ibrahim presented to the TR team and every sales rep started talking about how there was nothing else solving R&D like Neo.Tax on the market. In the spring, she checked back in with Ibrahim and realized that Neo.Tax had grown from a small company with an idea to “a really strong enterprise-level solution.” So, she made the leap.

After so many years at TR, I had to ask what finally convinced her to leave for a startup. “Neo.Tax is an AI solution that’s actually solving a problem,” she says. This was not a chatbot or an AI image generator or something to clean up your PowerPoints. “Tax is a real business problem. Once I understood the way that Neo.Tax is able to ingest data, actually solve a complex tax process and free-up hundreds of precious hours for tax professionals, I was  really impressed,” she says. “This is what every executive in tax leadership is being asked about: how do you integrate AI? They’re scrambling to find solutions that truly can solve a problem. Neo.Tax is the rare AI-powered solution that actually solves a problem in the tax space.”

An obsessive problem solver, Jo couldn’t wait to tell her network of tax professionals about Neo.Tax. “That’s always been the most fun part of the job,” she explains. “I like to solve puzzles, and so if you are asking a lot of good questions and hearing what your client’s pain is, and take the time to go back home and think it through, then you're going to find something to share.”

In these first six months on the job, Jo has ramped up the TR network and preached the gospel of Neo.Tax to many of her old friends in the tax world. At first, she’s often met with disbelief that the LLM can really do what she says it does. “A lot of these tax departments have been sold snake oil in the past,” she explains. So, it’s heartening to sit with them, and show them that “yes, we're actually taking this data and creating the correct calculations with solid drill back to your data, that audit trail that tax lives and breathes by.” That has “been the most fun part to witness” so far. Rather than pitching Neo.Tax as some magic solve, she walks the tax leaders through how the technology works, step-by-step.

Still, Jo knows there’s more work to do. To complete federal and state taxes at a multinational enterprise level takes hundreds of individual tasks, which means tax leaders are being pitched dozens of solutions to different parts of their process at any time. For Jo, what makes it easy to keep starting these conversations is that she knows the one she’s selling is one that doesn’t put a band-aid over a massive problem. It actually automates an entire tax category, cutting out hundreds of hours of manual work for tax teams and engineers. 

It wasn’t easy leaving TR after all those years. But Jo knows she’s picked the right team at Neo.Tax. “The culture here is one of such deep collaboration and respect for one another.  Firas and Ibrahim have done a remarkable job of bringing in top-level talent. I'm impressed by the group here every single day,” she says. “We’ve just stepped onto the field and we are changing the game.”