Women in Science Day - Liz

Saturday February 11th was the International Day of Women & Girls in Science. To mark it, we decided to reach out to women involved with Andover Trees who have a scientific or STEM background, and ask them to write something about their experiences. Have a look back at the previous six posts if you’ve missed them.

Liz Scrace, ATU Treasurer: Chartered Accountant

I started as a volunteer with Andover Trees United at its inception and around seven years ago as I semi-retired from my career as a chartered accountant I took on the role of treasurer for the charity. Accountancy may not traditionally be considered within the term STEM but a knowledge and understanding of statistics is an important basic.

My interest in accountancy started through holiday work in a family business which led to me taking an HND in Business Studies. From there I started training with a large firm of accountants in London working through all the various departments, for example one month would be in an audit team at a large housebuilding company, another preparing annual accounts for a wholesale butcher in Smithfield Market, another as part of a team investigating a company fraud. Overall, it took four years all very different and interesting but with a similar basic of requiring an ability to work with and interpret financial information.

Some years after achieving my qualification I decided to start a business providing accountancy services to small businesses helping them with day to day records of income and expenditure, annual reports and tax advice.

There is a wide range of opportunities for accountants worldwide; every organisation: company, charity, government, hospital needs people to plan for, record, analyse and interpret information from which financial decisions can be made whether the organisation is growing rapidly or struggling to keep afloat.