In the spirit of kicking off the new year, this is my inaugural blog post. I’ll use this blog to share insights on my business, relevant accounting topics and anything that could support individuals or business owners to leverage the resources currently available to them. I’d also like to use this initial post to provide a bit of background about me and the new niche I will be serving, in addition to my current service offerings.
I was introduced to accounting as a teenager while interning at an architect firm, but it didn’t click for me as a career at that time. My first full-time job as a receptionist, though, unexpectedly dropped accounting tasks into my lap that were interesting enough to make me consider a new direction. Growing up, all I wanted to do was work with animals. It was just my bad luck that science topics seemed to run through my mind like water in a stream.
So, at age 19, I was answering phones and learning Quickbooks Desktop 1999. I thoroughly enjoyed the numbers of accounting, the data entry, the reconciliations. I didn’t know much about financial statements at that time, but I was excited to help business owners and it felt right for me.
About 5 years later I decided to go to college and major in accounting. From there, I determined that I wanted to be a CPA. I aspired to some day buy the accounting and tax practice from my boss and hopefully, with a little luck, and a lot of education, be as successful as she was.
It was not an easy path to become a CPA. I was in school a long time, mostly because I was supporting myself and needed to work full-time in addition to going to school. I stuck with it, and after 7 years of college and 1 year of studying and exams, I finally got my CPA license. By this time, I was working in public accounting, and I began reflecting on what I wanted to do with my future. I enjoyed what I was doing and where I was doing it, but wanted to find something better aligned with my priorities.
Then I had a baby and my whole world changed. Now it wasn’t just aligning with my priorities, but flexibility that I needed as well. Since I didn’t know of any accounting jobs that offered the 7 – 10 pm shift, I decided to start my own practice. That way I could keep doing accounting work, but only take on the clients I could support on my limited time.
While getting my practice up and running, I started seeing a lot of coverage on the intersection of accounting and ESG. As I learned more about it, I started to feel excited about the possibilities of what ESG could mean for businesses and the planet. I took a few continuing education courses and realized that I had finally found what I had been looking for the last few years. In my personal life I’ve been doing what I can to be more thoughtful about how my actions impact the environment and others around me. I believe in striving for progress over perfection when it comes to my sustainable endeavors. Incremental progress is still progress.
Humans have an outsized impact on the conditions of our planet and each other. I think everyone can do significantly more to reduce their negative impact on the planet, and corporations have a special obligation to do everything they can to safeguard the planet and people for the future. ESG is a way for companies to communicate their commitment to doing that and it’s a way for investors, employees and consumers to keep them honest in how they are doing at that commitment. Working with companies in the ESG space allows me to support a mission I believe in and help build a better future for everyone, including my son.
I’ll be offering a number of services in the ESG space, including carbon accounting, materiality assessments, ESG strategy development, software consulting and implementation and others depending on client demand. I’m interested to see what happens in this space and how it grows in the coming years as a result of all the new reporting and compliance being implemented.
