Alice Horton

I've been in accounting since 2019, starting when I was still in high school working as a waitress at a small hotel restaurant. The person who hired me remembered that I said I was a weirdo that likes math, and when they needed help in accounting, they asked me to join their department doing accounts payable. That's what got me into it before I was even in college. I went to Western Michigan University where I got my degree in accounting, finishing my bachelor's in 3 years with a 4.0 in my accounting courses and a 3.96 overall. I also took some honors classes and loved my time there. All throughout college, I was doing internships, always staying busy because I knew I had to put in the work now if I wanted things to be easier later in life. My most proud achievement is that I moved across the country for a job when I was young - I packed up my whole life in Michigan and moved to California, which was a big thing to do on my own. It's given me so many cool opportunities, just being able to trust in yourself and create a whole new world somewhere else. I previously worked at an executive search firm, which was a great company and I loved it, but I sat with the question of whether someone observing my life could tell I was working towards my dream goal. I didn't really feel that way, so I made a job switch about 2 months ago. Now I work at a destination management company where we host super big corporate events, and we work with all types of venues and different vendors. I'm helping out on their accounting and operations team. My biggest responsibility right now is getting people paid - we're putting on these million-dollar events, and that can't happen without all the little guys. I've paid Frank Sinatra impersonators and pinnacle vendors, just making sure everyone involved in the events gets taken care of. I'm also doing bookkeeping for our company that has all of our inventory, going through all of our expenses and coding them where they need to go, just hoping we can get a good financial snapshot of how the business is doing. This role is a really good step in my career path because my ultimate goal someday is to own an event venue where I can host different corporate events. I realized to hit that goal, I need to understand the back end of a business - I don't want to go in with just hopes and dreams, I want to understand how everything operates. I'm a very independent person, and while I do like to get help from people, I want to be able to rely on myself and feel good about what I'm doing. I think understanding business is so powerful, especially for women, and if we can get that info ourselves, we don't need to rely on looking for a man or having to get advice - you can just build something on your own, and I think that's really incredible.