Monica Szeto, Financial Management Associate

Financial Management Associate
Ernst & Young, New York City

Monica Szeto grew up in San Francisco, California. She has a Bachelor of Science Degree in Managerial Economics with a minor in Statistics from the University of California, Davis. She describes herself as a city girl after her experience of living in Davis, California for 4 years.

During high school Monica worked as an intern at a biotech company, doing paralegal work, in their legal department. After graduating from college, she worked for 4 years at Hitachi America, Ltd. in Brisbane, California as a Credit Representative.

In order to grow her skills and gain insight to the a major financial firm, Monica had an opportunity to move forward with her career and went to work for Ernst & Young in San Francisco as a Financial Management Associate for 1 ½ years.  She wanted to gain exposure to international financial operations and preferred a large corporate setting.

Monica recently transferred to their New York Office and extended an invitation to me to do our interview in the company’s cafeteria on a “casual Friday”.  Most workers were dressed casually and easing into their summer weekend.  Monica noted that in San Francisco the dress code was more laid back than in NYC. She described New York office attire as being more traditional with a touch of trendiness.  Monica chose to transfer to New York city for the fast pace metropolitan lifestyle, where there’s always something going on only a train ride away.

Monica’s job is to support 10 Ernst & Young Partners that serve a variety of clients across different service lines. She works internally with 60 teams to make sure each team is creating an accurate budget for their project and ensuring that the teams stay within their budgets throughout the project.  The most difficult aspects of her job are managing, communicating and executing change to the 60 teams she is working with.

Besides challenging her skills, building relationships and getting insights into a number of different businesses, Monica says working for a large corporation is a real plus. One can more easily transition to another business operation internally or to a number of different office locations.

Monica’s all time favorite book is the Joy Luck Club as she grew up in Chinatown as a first generation Chinese-American.

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