Lucia Valenzuela

I'm a first-generation American - both of my parents are immigrants - and I was the first one in my family to go to law school. I finished my undergrad in legal studies online around 2011, which was pretty unique at the time because not a lot of folks were doing that. It's out of a school out of Chicago that's now known as Purdue. I was working full-time in a sales role while going to school. I went to Thomas Jefferson School of Law in San Diego and earned my Juris Doctorate. After law school, I started working at the Big Four, KPMG specifically, one of the largest accounting firms in the entire world. I was really depressed the first 6 months of working at KPMG because I thought, oh my gosh, I went to law school and this is what I'm doing for my legal career. But then I realized that there's so much opportunity for non-accountants, non-CPAs in the accounting world, because so much of it is professional services-driven, advisory work. The profession really needs people who think bigger and move them forward. The opportunity to be part of a big-scale transformation in this industry has kept me in it for so long and so excited about it. I made partner in about half the time that it takes an average person - I got promoted every year of my career for the first 6 years and made partner in my 6th year of practice. Now I'm a Chief Innovation Officer at James Moore & Company where I spearhead AI enablement and transformation for the firm and also serve as a consultant to other CPA firms and accounting firms. I'm a newer mom trying to juggle being a mom with having a big C-suite role and keeping my family together.