Going solo..

About four months ago I decided to hang my corporate boots. It’s hard to imagine I entered the corporate world at just 19 years old as an articled clerk at Ernst and Young in Zimbabwe. My memory of the aptitude test still feels fresh. Being my first solo trip to the capital Harare, the ordeal was overwhelming for a girl who’d been raised in a tiny mining village of about 8,500 people. As you can imagine, the bright lights and tall buildings of the capital represented so much promise to me. I was ready to take on the world and do everything I could to uplift myself and my family. The roughly one mile walk everyday down Fife Avenue in downtown Harare, on my way to Ernst and Young Zimbabwe is where it all began.

I am the first and only girl in a family of five. Growing up, the expectations my parents had for me were consistent with the times. I was to get a modest education, become a homemaker, get married and reproduce. When later in my teens, my parents decided to send me to a boarding school with better quality education, others chided them for wasting money sending a girl to school. After all, I was going to get married and become a part of someone else’s family and consequently all my labor would benefit my husband’s family. My mother made sure I was aware of the ridicule she endured. To protect her, I in turn did everything I could, so she would not wind up the laughing stock of the entire village.

I met my husband during my time at Ernst and Young through a mutual friend. We got married and moved to Bermuda. It was there that we were both first introduced to the world of Alternative Investments. We fell in love and took to our work with the same gusto we had taken our studies back home. Getting a job in Bermuda was not easy for me as a foreigner with no accounting license but I persisted. My first gig with Olympia Capital, now part of the CACEIS group, was the culmination of months of follow ups, tests, a little luck and the goodness of people’s hearts who saw my passion and believed in my ability. I vividly remember being absolutely blown away by all kinds of derivative instruments, side pockets, equalization and partnership accounting. In those early days, I wondered why we didn’t have this kind of work in my home country as I found it to be all so intriguing.

In 2006, we moved again, this time to San Francisco. I decided early on after our move that this was going to be home for me and my family. My older daughter was one at the time and I felt the need to settle down. We made a family decision that this was where we would be planted. We have no regrets. Soon after our move, I set about trying to establish my CPA license. I felt strongly that the only way I would be taken seriously as an accountant with no U.S work experience was to obtain the CPA designation. Getting the local board to certify my education and work experience was no walk in the park. I took night and weekend classes at a local college as well as online to get all the credits necessary for me to sit for the test. Once I passed, I needed to have work experience under the supervision of a CPA so I found myself in my 30s headed to public accounting.

Getting back to public accounting was just as difficult if not more difficult than passing the CPA exam. I was an unconventional candidate, so was largely ignored. My resume seemed to always wind up in a black hole. I petitioned everyone I knew until again people who hardly knew me, took a chance and introduced me to their fellow public accounting networks. I was able to get several interviews and pursue my path to finally getting a CPA license.

Throughout, my life and my career I have relied on the faith, trust and empathy of others to get me where I need to. I feel very strongly that it’s my turn now to do the same for others. Over the years, I have rarely said no to an opportunity to help others, whether it’s giving them my time or sharing my knowledge about a subject matter. As I sought to find meaning and new challenges, it felt increasingly clear to me that I needed more autonomy to achieve my goals. Predictably it hasn’t been easy, but I am fortunate enough to have an incredible support system. To be fair though, my younger daughter occasionally reminds me I don’t have a job so have no excuse for picking her late from school, ouch.

Fife Avenue Partners was established to provide Fund administration and CFO services for emerging venture capital managers looking to build institutional quality infrastructure as they scale. After 10 years of living in the bay area, it’s hard not to catch the entrepreneurial bug. Looking forward, it’s important to me that my firm becomes known for unmatched client service delivered with a huge dose of empathy for both our clients, partners and eventually staff. I am embarking on this journey with multitudes of optimism for the future on how we can impact others positively. I am thrilled and excited for what’s ahead. I am grateful to everyone that has helped me in ways both big and small. Many have availed their time to help guide me, others just listened, while others wildly waved their invisible pompoms, and for that I am immensely grateful.

Please visit my website at www.fifeavenuepartners.vc for information regarding my new venture. If you enjoyed reading this, please don’t forget to hit the like button to help me spread the word about my firm.