THE COMMUNITY LEADER

With deep ties to the KPU community as an alum, an employer of KPU students, a former instructor and now as chair of the KPU Foundation, Kelly Finlay aims to create opportunities for others the way she says her education did for her.

Finlay is a partner at Areti, a boutique accounting firm in Vancouver’s Yaletown district that specializes in helping entrepreneurs and start-ups grow. It’s a dream role, she says, that allows her to combine her accounting expertise with her passion for education.

“I’m passionate about my education and just business in general,” says Finlay. “My education opened a lot of doors for me, and I ended up being able to help other entrepreneurs grow their business with the knowledge that I have.”

Finlay has followed a non-traditional career path to becoming a partner at an accounting firm. She was inspired to go into the field by her first-year accounting professor at Vancouver Island University. Not the stereotypical accountant, he drove a motorcycle, was a partner at a firm, an active parent and the mayor of the town he lived in, Finlay recalls. For her, he became a role model for someone who uses their skills to have a positive impact.

“He was just a really cool, unique person and sort of broke the stereotype as to what I thought an accountant would look like and would be,” she recalls. “Since then, I've been like, ‘I can do that, I'm going to do that. I'm going to do all of that.’”

After becoming a parent, Finlay transferred to KPU so she could be closer to family and take courses in the evenings while she worked full-time as a controller at a manufacturing company in Delta. Her professors at KPU further solidified her resolve to use her education to contribute to her community, and through her own experience struggling to make ends meet as a working parent and student, she saw an opportunity to make a difference.

“I worked full-time, so I wasn't eligible for a bursary,” she recalls. “But because I worked full-time, I also wasn't necessarily getting the grades to qualify for scholarships. So, I found myself sort of in the middle of not quite getting a scholarship and not quite needing a bursary but feeling like there was an opportunity for students like me to get additional help because it certainly wasn't easy.”

She graduated from KPU with a diploma in accounting in 2012 and a bachelor of business administration in accounting in 2014. Not long after receiving her accounting designation and while rising through the ranks in public practice, Finlay made a donation to the KPU Foundation to establish the Amelia Lynn Achievement Award, named after her daughter, for a working parent like Finlay who wouldn’t qualify for other bursaries or scholarships. She says her daughter attends the annual awards banquet to meet the recipients who are proof that dreams can be pursued at any age.

Through that experience, she met Christine Brodie, director of the foundation, who convinced Finlay that her passion towards supporting students would be better served by joining the foundation’s board. After serving in various roles on the board, she recently took on the role of chair, lending her expertise to help fundraise to create quality, life-long learning opportunities for KPU students to achieve personal, social and career success.

“I think the work that the KPU Foundation does is fantastic,” she says. “KPU is a fantastic university – it's really easy to see it in the students that graduate and enter the workforce. I think the education that they get is very practical and they also get significantly more opportunities to put the theory they learn here into use before they step into the workforce. That makes a tangible difference for students leaving KPU and looking to jumpstart their career.”

Beyond her work for the KPU Foundation, Finlay has taught accounting at KPU, hoping to have the same kind of impact that KPU instructors like Brad Sacho, Lindsay Clayton and Ho Yee Low had on her.

“Teaching some introduction and intermediate accounting courses was a highlight for me in terms of coming back into those hallways and being the one that was going to inspire the next generation of accountants. That felt full circle for me.”

Finlay’s passion for lifting others is evident in her approach to her career, community service and family. She’s an employer of KPU students and strives to bring the same values to leading her team that she does in raising her two daughters. With around 20 employees, she says the culture they’ve created at Areti is one of her proudest accomplishments.

“Public practice is notoriously known for being a place where accounting students can come and gain experience when they're getting their CPA designation,” she explains. “So, I get to teach clients and students every day.” 