From admin to associate director

An early start in the tax world

For someone in my current role, I think I took a slightly unusual path.

I grew up in Liverpool and went to Liverpool University to study for a music degree. I’ve never really left the city because I honestly just love living and working in Liverpool. With my close family bonds and the city’s culture, I’ve never wanted to live anywhere else.

My family has a bit of a working history with tax, thanks to my mum, who worked in the civil service for about 45 years before retiring recently. While I was at university, she encouraged me to get a job to start earning and getting experience (as mums do), so I applied for and accepted an admin job on a part-time basis.

Over four years, I joined several internal training programmes and moved through various roles, covering tax enquiries and compliance in personal, large business and international tax, which was great. It gave me a broad range of experiences and helped me figure out my career direction.

But when I finished the graduate programme at 26, I started to crave more learning opportunities and something more connected to businesses and their owners. I wanted to try working in a fast-paced environment that was still related to tax, but through a different lens.

Joining Grant Thornton

I knew people working outside of HMRC in practice, and one close contact had moved from the civil service to Grant Thornton. They encouraged me to consider the firm, speaking highly of the working culture and saying I'd enjoy it here.

When I visited the Liverpool office for my interviews, I was impressed. From speaking with the partners, it seemed like the firm truly had an entrepreneurial mindset, encouraging new ideas and focusing on people’s development and growth. With the promise of this and a fast pace, it seemed like the ideal next step and environment for me.

So, I took the plunge and moved to Grant Thornton as a Tax manager. It was a steep learning curve, especially since I'm not an accountant by training. I had to pick up accounting knowledge on the job, but I was in a supportive environment with a great team who helped me to get there quickly. The people around me saw my potential and wanted to nurture that.

I started in corporate tax and then got involved in deals tax, which I instantly loved. My previous broad experience of running tax enquiries gave me transferable skills for due diligence and complex tax structuring work. I preferred the fast-paced environment of deals tax, with new projects all the time. It was definitely more interesting to me, and I still love that every day is different.

Clear progression to Associate Director

In some organisations, progression is slow and promotions are dependent on specific roles opening up. In contrast, Grant Thornton offers progression opportunities based on recognition of abilities and business needs. When I joined in April 2019, I got great support from the partners and local directors to grow and develop in my career. I was told I could progress quickly to Associate Director (AD) level, likely within just 12 to 18 months. COVID delayed things a bit, but the support and focus on growth were evident from the start.

I’ve found the process of progressing at the firm to be both fair and personable. Rather than having a competency-based interview with someone I didn’t know, the partners had taken time to get to know me and my work, and they are all approachable and generous with their time.

This environment made it easier for me to understand how to progress. Setting clear goals and meeting them was straightforward, and people followed through on their promises.

Managing the Liverpool-London balance

Wanting to pursue my passion for transaction tax further, I joined the TAS Tax team on a full-time basis in July 2022, which has meant that the rest of my team are London based while I still work from Liverpool.

This hasn't affected my ability to integrate with the team or get involved in the work, which I really value. The mindset of flexibility across the whole firm means I can work remotely without any drawbacks at all. I travel to London occasionally and I enjoy seeing the team in person when I can for meetings and strategy days, and being trusted to steer that myself to get the balance right is great.

I think flexible work in general helps you to build your career and play to your strengths. Especially here, you can set boundaries around your personal time and it's always respected. The deals team definitely has peaks and troughs with workload, but we support each other to manage it and keep a good work-life balance, something which is definitely of high importance and role-modelled by the partners in the team.

Looking to the future

My plan and hope is to be promoted to director in the near future. I am currently going through a development programme which supports people ahead of progressing to director, and brings together people from across the firm who are at a similar stage of their career. It's been a great opportunity to bounce ideas off each other and get clear guidance on the process, so I know what’s expected of me and have a plan to get there. Coupled with the support and input from the partner group on my business case, I’m feeling hopeful about the process.

On the development front, I'm keen to expand our team in the North West. The team in Liverpool is currently small, but I hope that a promotion to director will help to bring in more people from the region. For people in our industry, I’d like to show that it’s possible to work on transaction-type work in Liverpool and Manchester and still get the same interesting experience and opportunities as in London.