Driving clever outcomes … with a passion!

Andrea is not your typical Chartered Accountant. She may well be a highly experienced tax whizz, a guru with corporate structures and extremely capable of fixing all sorts of muddled affairs that she comes across from time to time.

But that’s really only the basics.

Perhaps her special talents start with her way of seeing the world. Her lateral clear thinking is always challenging the most obvious paths that clients intend to choose. She stops them in their tracks and helps them re-valuate risk and reward or to balance their course of action against their previously articulated goals and vision. She can be the handbrake on a dangerous track that may have only pain at the end.

Sometimes the truth hurts but no one ever rejects the challenge.

Andrea has an amazing capacity to design and deliver great corporate and taxation outcomes from often highly complex scenarios, often with difficult legacy issues and multiple competing challenges. These are reduced to simple and easily understood concepts that her business owner, former business owner and investor clients can understand. And, more importantly, their spouses.

She once inherited the nickname of “Good Financial Wife” to reflect the trusted relationship Andrea had with her clients. Indeed, when Andrea left her former partnership early in 2016, Fordham kindly offered her the option to take those clients with whom she had this close relationship. Every one of them followed Andrea.

It is an unbreakable bond.

Some clients see Andrea like a personal trainer. Someone who is always there, someone to whom they can ask tough questions, someone to validate their thinking, someone to keep them on track, someone who doesn’t judge but helps clients help themselves and someone who always looks at the big picture.

But what her clients don’t see is Andrea’s ability to manage a professional service firm from within. Andrea was once the guru within the Grant Thornton network who taught the many practitioners and partners around Australia how to run their firms more efficiently and effectively. She helped them understand how client relationships needed to be respected and how a firm grows organically through fabulous service. Their respect for her thinking and diligence was immense.

She may now only have a handful of staff to manage but she has hand picked every one of them. She sought them from their current working lives and returned them to the roles they had with her years before. Interestingly, so far each person is also a mum with her own busy life. Andrea has structured their work lives to fit around their family realities.

This is true flexibility. Often spoken about but rarely delivered.

Moreover, Andrea ensures that her people enjoy the same caring relationship with her family of clients that she does. Like her, her people work hard to ensure the very best outcomes for their clients. Those outcomes are usually more than just financial. They include the important drivers of success that help clients achieve their personal and family goals.

Indeed, Andrea believes that we need to help our people, our clients and our friends to “have fun, make money and be respected”. That was the motto of the firm when she joined as a graduate in 1989 and she has been the custodian of that thinking ever since. This philosophy underpins her passion for excellence and the importance of relationships.

Andrea is truly unique.