The newest recipient of the ACCA Advocate of the Year award in the US, Kayode Yusuf (left), relocated to the country in 2011, having started his career with PwC in Nigeria. Now living and working in Boston as financial controller at Entegris, a manufacturing company, he plays an active role in ACCA, supporting local students and ACCA members with their career journeys and professional experience.
Yusuf immersed himself in ACCA activities soon after qualification. He is a past deputy head of the ACCA member network in Boston and a registered mentor. He also organises local events, including a quarterly ACCA meeting at Harvard University, where ACCA professionals can connect and network with each other.
His goal is to inspire the local membership to raise awareness of the ACCA brand and qualification within their organisations. Recently, he spoke to students at UMass Lowell, Massachusetts, about the advantages of the qualification and his own ACCA journey.
‘Seeing students progressing on their ACCA journey really satisfies me’
‘Mentoring students when they are on their ACCA journey, seeing how they’ve progressed through completing their exams and becoming solid professionals in their field, really contributing to the field of accounting and finance – seeing that journey really satisfies me,’ he says.
A wider view
Yusuf is also active with his peers, introducing other professionals from his wider network to speak at ACCA meetings and share knowledge on, for instance, making better use of artificial intelligence in accounting and finance as well as technical areas such as transfer pricing.
ACCA meetings have a real value for the ACCA community, he says. ‘It takes you away from your specialisation and you get to learn from other people.’
Over time, Yusuf has seen the profile of the ACCA name gain traction with organisations he interacts with locally. ‘It’s been very satisfying to contribute. After graduating with an MBA from Boston, I noticed that lots of employers in the US don’t really know what ACCA stands for. That brand recognition was not there. I’m proud to say that I’m an ACCA member everywhere I go, just letting people know that this is a solid world-class qualification.’
‘I talk a lot about integrity and accountability’
Mentoring ACCA students and visiting universities gives him an opportunity to embed ACCA principles and values at an early stage. ‘I talk a lot about integrity and accountability. Those are the two ACCA values that I really focus on: upholding the highest ethical standards in all our professional activities and ensuring transparency in our interactions. I make sure those points are fully made when I’m mentoring my students, because you’re going to go far if you have them.’
New opportunities
In Canada, this year’s ACCA Advocate of the Year is Mohamed Irshad (left), currently CFO of the Prosumer Software business at Schneider Electric, based in Toronto, Canada.
Irshad’s advocacy for ACCA began soon after he moved to Canada from Paris, where he had been working as an internal auditor for Schneider. Already a practised public speaker, he was asked to represent ACCA at an Institute of Internal Auditors (IIA) conference. ‘I was head of internal audit at Schneider Electric at the time, so it was a good opportunity to build a new network and learn something new,’ he says.
Irshad’s public speaking role is much broader than internal audit. He has spoken on diversity, equity and inclusion in the workplace, a topic very close to his heart, as well as ethics and compliance, strategic workforce development and the future direction of the accounting profession.
In 2022, he moved to Toronto and took a role on the IIA Toronto Board of Governors. He has served on both IIA’s governance board in Canada and on the ACCA Canada members network, where he has been vice chair and chair.
‘A lot of mentorship is about how you brand yourself’
A significant part of his ACCA advocacy has involved interacting with audit leaders in Canada, answering questions about ACCA, talking about how the qualification works and advocating for the qualification in the Canadian market.
Speaking engagements at the University of Toronto as well as a visit to the University of Calgary have also led him to engage with the student community about the accounting profession and the ACCA qualification. ‘Often, it’s simply talking about who we are as ACCA accountants: what we do and how my career has grown in that journey.’
A different approach
New arrivals to Canada also need support from ACCA and advocates such as Irshad. ‘In Canada, something that we see is it’s a market that grows mostly through expatriate and immigrant members coming in,’ he says. ‘It requires a different vision. Apart from the networking and the speaking opportunities, there’s a lot of mentorship that goes on to say this is how you brand yourself, this is how you integrate yourself into the culture.’
‘The market is starting to see our value’
Talking to a handful of students and new members each year and helping them with their career journeys is an approach that is starting to gain ground. ‘The market is growing. I think we have some good partnerships developing in Canada with employers. That’s where the focus has been, getting visibility and recognition with employers. It’s about making sure managers and hiring leaders are aware of who we are.
‘We’re starting to see a difference. Now we have a lot more people being interviewed. In my early days here, I was probably one of the few internal audit leaders who were part of the ACCA network. Today I can see a lot more internal auditors who are part of the ACCA network are also on the internal audit boards in Canada. The market is starting to see our value.’
More information
Find out more about becoming an ACCA advocate
