I wasn’t sure what I wanted to be when I left school. But my maths teacher said he thought the way my mind worked would make me a good accountant. It stuck with me even as I tried other things.
I’ve worked in many sectors throughout my career. I had roles at building merchants, outsource service providers, utilities and events before finding myself working in the leisure and tourism industry. It is like no other sector, and no two days are the same.
Parkdean Resorts is the UK’s largest holiday park operator operating 67 parks around the UK. Due to the increase of people staying in the UK for their holidays over the last two years, the industry has boomed, making it a very fast-paced business to work for. My role is to support the parks and regional directors with all things finance. This could include looking at risks and opportunities in the P&L, completing a forecast update, completing an ROI on a potential new investment, or building a companywide model to show the financial impact of a change of operation.
My role is a huge change in focus and direction, but my strong experience in management accounts has really helped
I stepped outside of my comfort zone when I took on my current finance business partnering role. My background is in management accounting – I worked my way up from an accounts assistant role to financial controller. My role now is a huge change in focus and direction, but I’ve found that my strong knowledge and experience in management accounts has really helped me support the parks with their financial decisions.
Technological advancements are having a big impact on our roles. It is less about producing the numbers now and more around how to understand the outputs and how you can use that information to drive growth and opportunities. You also need to be able to make those understandable to people who don’t necessarily speak ‘finance’.
ESG [environmental, social and governance] is a key issue that is going to affect most companies in one way or another as we move to a more sustainable future. Finance departments need to balance improving their ESG credentials with the need to reduce costs and sustain growth and profits.
If I hadn’t become an accountant, I’d have probably ended up working with animals or in marine conservation. It’s an area I have a huge interest in outside of work. My main hobby is scuba diving; I also used to also skydive. I love walking and stand-up paddleboarding, and luckily living in Devon there is plenty of opportunity for that!
