Emma Lericque: From Hospitality to Research Finance

In this episode, Emma Lericque, ACA, CPA shares her non-linear route to becoming a Chartered Accountant: qualifying first as an Accounting Technician, then studying through the Flexible Route while raising two young children and working for her father's insurance brokerage, where she helped steer the high-stakes sale of the family business.

She reflects on the confidence knocks of returning to the job market, the mentoring and support from Chartered Accountants Ireland that helped her find her feet, and her work today as a Financial Accountant at Dublin City University. Her advice for anyone unsure of their path: feel the fear and do it anyway, because becoming a Chartered Accountant opens all the doors.

Transcript

Emma Lericque: 0:00

If you're not even sure what you want to do in life, become a chartered accountant because it opens all the doors My name is Emma Lericque. I am Irish, but I married a Belgian man, and I am an accountant at Dublin City University. Hello, and welcome to Become a Chartered Accountant, a podcast from Chartered Accountants Ireland. I remember growing up, I was interested in numbers and languages And I decided that languages was the route I was gonna take. But I wanted to do business at the same time, so, um, yeah, I worked in, uh, France and Italy and America and England, and traveled around. Really enjoyed it. Came back to Dublin and worked for the Four Seasons in Ballsbridge, which I loved, and I, after 10 years, I decided that I needed maybe more routine. My Belgian husband was then my Belgian boyfriend, and he had traveled to Ireland with me after my travels, and he was working 9:00 to 5:00 and not seeing me because I was working weekends. So I changed to get a 9:00 to 5:00 job, which was with a travel tech company, and because I spoke French, I worked on the French market. And then after a year, they needed help with the accounts for the French market, so I moved into the accounts side of the business And decided that I really enjoyed this part of the business, so I thought finance was the future for me. I looked around and found an accounting technician course with the IBAT in Swords, and it was part-time and it was perfect. And I did my year one with the travel tech company, and then year two was when I moved to work for Hertz, and I qualified then as an accounting technician. And I thought, "Yeah, I'm gonna keep going. I'm, I'm gonna become a Chartered Accountant." And then we had our graduation here at the Chartered house, and I was just so impressed with the buildings, with the caliber of support, and the prestige of Chartered Accountants. It was like a university again. It was feeling like part of a family. And, um, and as an accounting technician, they were really saying, "You know, come on, you guys can do it. You can become Chartered Accountants." And I thought, "Yeah, yeah, definitely. I really enjoy this." However, I, uh, put that on hold Because I was in my early 30s and it was time to do things like get married and buy a house and have kids, and we did that. I have two kids, a boy and a girl, and when my daughter was one and I had moved to working for my father's company, he offered flexible hours, which Hertz couldn't offer, and I thought, "Perfect. With two children, flexible hours, I will take this on board." My dad, his company is an insurance brokerage, so he had built it up from 1981 into, uh, one of the most respected insurance brokerages in Ireland, and I wanted to do him proud. I didn't want to just be balancing books, so I said, "This is the time now to go and continue my Chartered Accountant studies." Doing the flexible route really suited me because I had my two small children and I was working flexible hours and, I mean, it was, it was just the dream, you know? I had a lot of lists, you know, because I was responsible for my own time, my own study, my own work, but it was a really great time of my life. And the support from the Chartered Accountants was really important. When I was doing the course, I found that it really applied to what I was doing in my job as the company accountant and wanting to give strategic support to the business. Everything that I learned about tax was so relative to going back then and working for the company. Uh, you know, I was doing everything, you know, supporting the annual audit, forecasting, budgeting, everything. I was exposed to all of it. And then my father decided to retire and to sell his company, and he found a buyer So again, I was pivotal in all of these decisions, forecasts for the tender, putting together the company valuation, the due diligence, uh, reports. It was like a crash course in high-stakes finance. All of these things were parts of the course that I was now putting into practice, and I just really felt confident and capable, and it was remarked by the buyer's auditors how the quality of my work was, was so good, the best that they had seen. And that's thanks to the quality of the Chartered Accountants' course and the standard that they maintain. Leadership is really important to me. My dad started the company i- in 1981, worked really hard and, and led by example. I want to also mention that my mom is an inspiration. We, she had five kids, and she is a trained nurse, but back then in the public sector, when you got married and had kids, you had to give up work. She never managed to get back to work, but everybody in our, on our road would go to my mom for, you know, uh, everything and anything to do with their physical health and their mental health. I'm the only girl with four brothers. She raised me to believe in having my own job, having my own money, and being treated an equal in my marriage because I think it really affected her to have to give up what she loved to do. So now for myself as a mother, and I have a, a boy and a girl, and I want them to see that women become professionals. They have careers. Having a job you like gives you purpose and joy, and having a career means you're always growing, always learning, always progressing, even if the path isn't linear. Would recommend the flexible route without hesitation. It's one of the most powerful enablers we have for women in finance, especially for those like me balancing work and family and nonlinear career paths, a pathway that finally acknowledges the realities of women's lives and still gives them access to a world-class qualification. After the sale, um, I decided to take a break. So I took a career break for a year, but rather than sit back on my laurels, I signed up for the Dublin Marathon and after a year decided that it was time to look for a job This was my first time now applying for jobs as a Chartered Accountant, and suddenly my confidence was shot. I thought, "Am I really? Like, am I really able to do these jobs?" And every job description I looked at, I thought, "Oh, gosh, I don't know if I can do that." I… So I reached out to Chartered Accountants House and I talked to Dave and Karen in membership services and recruitment and started coming to the women's mentoring evenings and found that once again I was with a family of like-minded people. The women's mentoring evenings were such a, a great source of support and inspiration, and they built my confidence back up. From there, I met a careers coach who gave me six coaching sessions and really built my confidence back up again so that I was ready to start, uh, applying for jobs. And I saw the role with DCU for research finance, and I felt that it really aligned with my values. I wanted to use my accounting skill in a way that gave back, and working in the research finance department at DCU allows me to do that. So with the research finance department in DCU, doctorates and students who will gain funding from, for example, Research Ireland, and while they need to focus on the science and the innovation, myself and the team in the research finance will help them with the budgeting and the reporting and ensuring that they are aligning with the conditions of the grant. The principal investigators, the PIs, are so inspirational, and in my small way, I feel like I am giving back to the world. I know some people think that accounting is all about numbers. That's the stereotype, but in my experience, it actually has been the complete opposite. The numbers are the starting point, but the real work is the people, the communication, judgment, and navigating the complexity of business. I've worked in high-stakes environments, selling the family business, and now supporting world-class research at DCU. But I've also built communities through mentoring, rediscovered my confidence, and found purpose in helping others to succeed The advice I would give my younger self is to believe you can do it. You're never gonna feel ready. You're always going to question, but just feel the fear, do it anyway. None of us ever feel fully ready when we start doing something. I took a long time to become a chartered accountant, but I don't regret it. If you're not even sure what you want to do in life, become a Chartered Accountant because it opens all the doors