Past, present and future

As this is a blog that I’m writing from my perspective, I thought it might be useful to know more about me. My name is C , which is simply the first letter of my name. I do this because I want to write freely and this gives me the ability to do so. I’m in my early thirties, I’ve been living in Europe all my life. I’ve been in a relationship for the past five years, my partner works in software development. I studied at university to get a Master in applied economics and one in audit. Together with my twin brother we are the first in our family to go university and I’m the first woman ever to study after high school. Both my parents work very physical jobs and they wished that their kids could work ‘with their head’. Which they thought would make our life easier. Although not exactly true (every job has challenges), it does make the circumstances I work in much more agreeable than theirs. They worked a lot to pay for our studies and thus I have no student loans or anything. I hope that one day I can repay this incredible gift. 

After my studies it was time to find a job. Ever since I was in high school my dream was auditing. I know, not glamorous for a teenager to want to have a job auditing figures but that was the case. It would allow me to get to know a lot of companies, get trained by industry experts, and just learn a lot about how businesses function. So in my last year at uni I started to look around at where I wanted to work. Originally I thought a mid-tier audit firm was for me but after some events with Big 4 firms it seemed that those firms had more bigger clients and that interested me more. After a trial interview at a firm that interested me less, I decided to go interview with KPMG. There seemed to have a less competitive atmosphere and a more human touch and it just clicked. After some interview rounds I was selected to start there in September after my graduation. I was lucky enough to get a very nice portfolio of clients. I had both IFRS and US GAAP clients, both group and statutory reporting and in a variety of industries: retail, chemical, software, healthcare, etc. most of them being large global corporations. I think that working at a Big 4 was the best first working experience ever. It taught me a lot about myself, life, and business. Nowhere else I would’ve seen and learned about so many different ways of doing finance, reporting, etc. Also, you get a lot of responsibility in a relatively short time so you get to learn how to manage a team, to work towards deadlines, and to grow to be a manager all before you are 30. 

After six years with KPMG it was time for a new challenge. I felt that I wasn’t learning a lot of new things and I didn’t align fully anymore with how KPMG saw my future. So I decided to leave. But I had no idea what to do next. I looked on the internet for interesting jobs and after some encouragement of my partner I narrowed it down to two different jobs in two different fields in finance. One was internal auditing and one was controllership. Both were global companies and both were very interesting. I send out my CVs for both and was invited to interview for both. Quickly it became clear that the internal audit job was not for me, not of because of the job itself but because of the culture of the company. The second one in controllership was an immediate hit. It clicked well with the people and the general culture of the company and less than 4 weeks after looking for something new, I was signing my new contract. 

My current job is for a multinational company, it’s headquarters are in the USA. We work in several industries. My job is very diverse. I’m responsible for reporting both to the US and statutory. So I still do audits but now from the other side. But I’m also involved if there are issues with accounts payable or with tax and legal. If the business has finance questions I’m one of the main contacts. We have a saying in our team that if things are difficult or are going wrong they are surely in the scope of controllership and thus for us to resolve or implement. My title is finance manager within the controllership department which is part of the finance department. I have several legal entities for which I’m responsible, located in several countries. We work with shared service centers so besides working with colleagues located at the various entities, I have a lot of contact with the SSC as well which makes you feel that you are part of an international network. 

Now that you know something about my past and present, let’s talk about the future. Although I’m not quite sure what it has in store for me I do know that I wanted to make this blog. I wanted to share my experiences and hopefully give you some insight into what I've learned. Everyone’s journey is personal but I find that sharing experiences give me perspective so that is what I want to give you, a different perspective. I want to talk about things that professionals deal with but not from the perspective of a coach or an executive but someone that is going through it and it still figuring things out. Hopefully we can share experiences and learn from each other. I’m looking forward to where the future will take me (and this vlog). See you on the next blog.