Sara Sharpe, CPA

I attribute my success to education, perseverance, hard work, and the people who believed in me along the way. I was born in Mexico and raised by a single mother who worked incredibly hard to raise three daughters on her own. Her example taught me resilience, responsibility, and the importance of creating opportunities through education.

After high school, I had to make a real decision: go to work and try to build a life without a degree, or find a way to pay for college even though I did not know how I was going to afford it. I chose school, and I am so grateful I did. Education opened doors for me that I did not even know were possible at the time.

One story that has always stayed with me happened when I was in high school. My friends and I would sometimes sit near a large office building in downtown Dallas, and I remember looking at it and wondering if I would ever work in a place like that. A few years later, I had an interview for one of my first accounting jobs, and when I arrived, I realized it was that same building. Standing there was surreal. It felt like a full-circle moment and a quiet confirmation that I had made the right decision to keep going, stay in school, and believe that I could build the future I wanted.

I also had mentors early in my career who saw potential in me and pushed me to believe I belonged in rooms I once only hoped to enter. That support, combined with determination and a willingness to keep learning, helped shape the path I’m on today. My hope is that my story reminds other young women that where you start does not define where you can go.

The best career advice I ever received came from one of my first accounting leaders, a controller named Ronna Ritter. Early in my career, there was office gossip and drama happening around me. I was not necessarily the center of it, but I was paying too much attention to it, and it was becoming a distraction.

Ronna pulled me aside and said something I have never forgotten: “You have potential. You’re smart. Get yourself out of this, or they will take you down.” It surprised me because I did not even realize someone was watching, but it was exactly what I needed to hear.

That moment taught me the importance of self-awareness, professionalism, and staying focused on the work that truly matters. Ronna was direct, tough, respected, and one of the few women in leadership at that time. I have always been grateful that she cared enough to be honest with me, and I still try to carry that same kind of direct, supportive leadership forward.

My advice to young women entering this industry is to stay curious, keep learning, and do not let the complexity of technology or business intimidate you. You do not have to know everything on day one, but you do have to be willing to ask questions, work hard, and keep building your knowledge over time.

I also believe education matters, whether that comes through a degree, professional experience, mentors, or simply being intentional about learning. The more you understand the business, the customer, and the problem you are trying to solve, the more valuable your voice becomes.

Most importantly, believe in yourself and do not let anyone else’s expectations, opinions, or circumstances define what is possible for you. You have to write your own story and keep fighting to find the work, people, and purpose that make you excited to show up every day. I love what I do because it brings together so many things I care deeply about: accounting, technology, our customers, the people I work with, and the industry relationships I have built over the years.

I tell my own daughter this often: it may take time to find exactly where you are meant to be, but keep learning, keep trying, and keep putting yourself in situations that challenge you. When you find work you believe in and surround yourself with people who are passionate about it too, that is when you can do your best work and build a career that is truly meaningful.

One of the biggest opportunities in my field right now is the pace of technology, especially the way AI and automation are changing how businesses operate. I see AI as one of the most significant technology shifts of our time, similar to the early days of the internet or the move from basic mobile phones to smartphones, but potentially even more transformative.

The challenge for professionals today is that we cannot treat AI as something happening around us. We have to lean in, stay curious, and understand what it means for our businesses, our customers, and the work we do every day. What many people first experienced as simple conversational AI has evolved quickly into broader generative capabilities, agentic workflows, and systems that can help execute work more intelligently and autonomously. For businesses, this creates tremendous opportunity to simplify complex workflows, improve decision-making, and help teams operate more efficiently.

At the same time, innovation has to be practical, responsible, and grounded in real customer problems. Technology should not just be exciting; it should create meaningful value, improve the user experience, and help businesses operate with more confidence and control.

As a CPA and a technologist, I feel a strong responsibility to ensure AI is trusted, traceable, auditable, and used ethically. The goal should not simply be to move faster, but to create solutions that deliver high-confidence results and can be managed responsibly.

There is also a continued opportunity to bring more diverse voices into technology and product leadership. The best products are built when different perspectives are represented, especially by people who deeply understand the customer, the business, and the real-world problems being solved.

The values that matter most to me are integrity, trust, honesty, kindness, and being fully present in whatever I am doing. Quality over quantity is important to me, both at work and in my personal life. We all have busy schedules and so many things competing for our attention, so I try to be honest with myself about what I can take on, what I cannot, and where I need to communicate clearly with others.

Kindness is also very important to me. Stressful situations happen, people forget things, plans change, and frustrations come up, but you never really know what someone else may be going through. I try to remind myself that the sky is rarely actually falling, and tomorrow is another chance to try again. There is no reason to make a hard situation harder by forgetting to treat people with grace.

So much of that comes from my mother. She moved to this country on her own with three young daughters and fought every step of the way to give us a better life. She is the strongest woman I know — truly a woman to be reckoned with — and her courage, grit, and love shaped the way I see the world. I hope one day I am remembered with even a fraction of the respect and admiration people have for her.

Family is also at the center of who I am. I have been incredibly blessed with a small but mighty family, and the time we spend together restores me. Whether it is Thursday poker night with my sisters and friends, monthly family dinners, or just small moments together, those pieces of family time keep me grounded and remind me what really matters.