I met Clare through Bonfire, as part of the small group I was leading. One of the first things I noticed about Clare was the combination of intelligence and empathy she brought with her. During our six months together, I got to learn about her work as an Audit Senior Manager at KPMG, the BRG group she leads, and her superhuman ability to keep any plants alive. 

When I ask about what she sees as her origin story, she tells me it was dance at the age of three. While it was an extracurricular choice through her mom’s friend, she continued through school and in college as well. So much of who she is today was defined from the early lessons of dance and her teachers. The teachers at the studio welcomed and included everyone, and embodied hard work, discipline and empathy in their actions. No matter who won, everyone clapped for everyone. Though no longer a dancer at the studio, it remains an integral part of her life (her mom still helps out with recitals).

In high school she discovered that she liked Maths but not Science (ruling out a path towards engineering). In undergraduate she majored in Actuarial Science, and job shadowed an actuary, a role she was interested in. While this isn’t true for the entire profession, the person she shadowed sat in her office all day and if people needed to communicate with her, they had to put notes into a plastic compartment (!). Clare knew that she needed to be in a work environment where she was part of a team. 

Accounting was another subject that clicked with how her brain functioned, and she had a chance to intern with KPMG and was offered a job there. She accepted the offer on the last possible day, debating the alternate path of moving to LA to become a professional dancer: her family was supportive of both choices. She muses that while her choices have been risk averse, they have all turned out well. 

In her work, her approach has been to find what challenges her the most, and then do it. When considering her next step at work a little over a year ago, she had a choice between her client-facing role or moving to a more technical, less people-oriented job. She knew the latter would push her and considered choosing it for that reason. But a manager of hers reminded her that just because it was more challenging doesn’t mean that it was something she “should” do, especially if she loved her current job. The “should'' voice is one that resonates with many of us. 

While she works on projects where she interacts with the same clients over different years, the work changes, which keeps it interesting. Fulfilment at work for her is also a function of the people she works with, who work really hard and push a high-performing culture for everyone. The team environment and inspirational mentors she works with have become one of her favorite parts of her job.

She does identify as a textbook introvert, and refuels personally by cooking, reading and listening to music. When I ask her about where she sees herself in five years from now, she says that while she loves to plan, she doesn’t quite know what that will be. What she does know is that she has found purpose in the concept of kindness in humanity. The church and pastor she grew up with has played a role in this perspective. She tells me about the Dash Poem - as someone who enjoys poetry very much, this was a lovely introduction and recommendation. The pastor would remind the congregation that what mattered was how you lived your life in the dash, between your birth and death. Her five, ten years or forever story will always include her being a person who made the environment around her safe so people felt welcomed to be who they were. She jokes that no one will talk about the auditing she did during her dash story but she hopes they will remember the environment she created.

I ask her about formative influences in her life, and without hesitation she tells me it is her brother and sister-in-law. She reminisces about being a freshman in high school when her brother was a senior, and overlapping in college - her brother and now sister-in-law had lunch together every Friday. Whenever she is in doubt, she asks herself what would Craig do, and would I be proud to tell him about this. She recalls taking the CPA exam the first time and being surrounded by friends who all passed it first try while she didn’t. She remembers talking to him and he asked her what happens now. She told him that she needed to spend more time and money to take the exam - and that seemingly simple question calmed her anxiety, and reminded her that it was manageable. She went on to clear the exam in her second attempt. She has always felt enveloped by a blanket of security and happiness with her family, no matter the circumstance. 

She is hopeful about starting to travel again, and remembers studying abroad in Italy when she was only 19. The people she met, their lives and circumstances, it shifted her universe of understanding the world. It made her more aware of the potential of viewing a situation from multiple perspectives - like a new pair of glasses, once you see, you cannot unsee. I find that to be a wonderful reminder, as each time I do a profile, it shifts my mind in ways I could not have imagined. 

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Spotlight Series: Year 1 Wrapped

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Angie Jacob