Shane Chaney has spent nearly four decades proving that accounting is not, in fact, about counting beans.

The 1986 Herrin High School graduate has managed payroll for 1,125 employees across multiple states, traveled to India and the Philippines, overseen nearly $300 million in assets, been called into multi-million dollar acquisitions, and met Mel Gibson on the set of The Passion of the Christ. Not exactly the career arc most people picture when they imagine an accountant from Herrin, Illinois.

It all started with a guidance counselor and a simple admission.

As a junior at Herrin High, Shane sat down with Coach Byron Keener to talk about his future. He didn't have a strong direction — only what he knew he wanted: something practical, stable, and built on a four-year degree.

"I said, Coach, I don't know. I like math. I don't want to be a lawyer. I don't want to be a doctor. I just want to do something where I can earn a good living."

Keener suggested accounting. Shane wasn't convinced — until he took the class. Kathy Dann made it interesting, and he found he was good at it. By August 1986, he was an accounting major at SIU Carbondale, working his way through school and discovering that Herrin had prepared him well. General education coursework that was supposed to challenge him felt familiar. The academic foundation was already there.

After graduation, he spent about eighteen months at Marion Pepsi, rising from staff accountant to financial analyst, then in 1991 joined TCT Network — a nonprofit television organization based in Marion that almost nobody had heard of. He hadn't either when he started.

He stayed 31 years.

During that time, TCT grew from five stations and $35 million in assets to thirty stations and nearly $300 million in assets. Shane moved from staff accountant to controller to CFO, serving in that role for roughly the last 15 to 20 years. He managed payroll across multiple states, oversaw investments, handled major acquisitions, and took trips to India and the Philippines as TCT expanded internationally. In the Philippines, the organization operated cable systems and maintained a prayer center — a long way from Southern Illinois.

"It was eye-opening," he said. "Something you just can't trade for anything."

When the work brought him to meet Mel Gibson during the production of The Passion of the Christ, he filed it under "things you wouldn't ordinarily expect as a kid from Herrin."

After TCT, Shane became CFO at Voyage Senior Living, a nonprofit operating eight elderly residential facilities across Southern Illinois — locations in Anna, Murphysboro, Marion, and Herrin, including a memory care unit for dementia patients. Two years of detailed Medicaid regulation work, different from anything he'd done before.

Then, in what he calls a full-circle moment, he joined SIU as Director of Accounting Services — the same university where he'd earned his degree decades earlier. He'd tried to get a job there straight out of graduation.

"It took me a little over thirty-three years to get back," he said with a laugh.

His wife — who works for Ameren Illinois — once observed that most of the people running major companies came up through accounting. She's not wrong, Shane says. The field touches every corner of an organization: strategic decisions, compliance, investments, and people. It's not narrow work.

He grew up on South 20th Street in Herrin, raised by a single mother who worked at Herrin Hospital and held the household together through discipline and consistency. He's been in Herrin his entire life. For most of his career, his commute was ten minutes. Now it's twenty-five — the longest drive of his professional life.

He and his wife have four daughters; three are Herrin High School graduates, and one is currently finishing her junior year at Agape Christian. Of the four, exactly one became an accountant.

"That's 25%," I point out. "That's more than a lot of families."

Shane's description of Herrin to people he meets while traveling is practical and enthusiastic: a community where people know each other, with strong schools and a rich Italian heritage, and perfectly positioned for anyone who occasionally wants a bigger city. "Just point your car in any direction," he says, "and within a couple of hours you're going to be in a big city."

He has lived that balance his whole life.

"Take advantage of what you're offered," he said, "and you're going to do well."