Her Story
About Vandana
Vandana Mehrotra serves as Senior Audit Manager at PwC in San Jose, California, where she has worked for the past four years. With nearly 15 years of experience in public accounting, she previously spent three years at a firm in New York called Steinberg, Steckel, and Picchiro, followed by eight years at RSM. Her areas of specialization include audits for private companies, middle markets, and family-owned businesses. Vandana holds CPA licenses in New Jersey and California, is a certified internal auditor, and possesses an Indian Chartered Accountancy degree. She attributes her success to the early encouragement from her father in India, who valued her education equally to her brothers, as well as the support of her husband and son. Vandana places the highest importance on integrity and honesty in her profession. She advises young women entering the field to value the increased flexibility in public accounting while recognizing that it is a two-way street, and she identifies significant growth opportunities in the private sector, particularly among family-owned businesses such as agriculture companies and vineyards in California.
Her Interview
Ten minutes with Vandana
01What do you attribute your success to?
I'd say a lot of it is my dad who pushed me early on, even back in India, just wanting to excel. Sometimes back in India, you know, a boy's education is more important than a girl's education, but he never made me feel that, so my performance was just as important to him as my brothers. And then my husband as well. My husband's been so supportive from the very beginning, and he let me know that I should be doing something with my life rather than just being a homemaker or raising our son. So it's been both my dad and my husband, and then of course my son who's been super understanding.
02What’s the best career advice you’ve ever received?
If you're passionate about something, you should invest the time and energy into getting the certification. A lot of time in accounting, I see people struggle for years but don't invest the time to actually get the CPA degree. If you're doing something 9 to 5, might as well get the certification, get the legal qualification for you to be able to actually pursue the field for many many years rather than just making it a 9 to 5 job.
03What advice would you give to young women entering your industry?
The public accounting industry especially does have a ton more flexibility than it did pre-COVID. To value that flexibility is important, like flexibility goes both ways, so if you have that flexibility where you can work from home certain days, make sure you're providing the same level of dedication on the other side if you have a deadline or something. Flexibility is a two-way street.
04What are the biggest challenges or opportunities in your field right now?
I feel like the private industry is a big opportunity at the moment. A lot of the Big Four's focus is on just getting the larger audits, most of the listed companies, but the real growth actually within private, where we have so many private companies throughout the U.S. The biggest opportunity here in the coming years will be in the private space, given the growth that we have seen, and even the family-owned business especially here in California like all of the agriculture companies, the vineyards, which are California's mainstay.
05What values are most important to you in your work and personal life?
For CPAs or for an audit firm, the biggest thing is integrity. You're just being honest as we report on the financial statements for our clients, so integrity and honesty is very important to our field, and our firm strictly enforces it. All of us are told very early on that you have to be very honest and you have to hold yourself up to the highest integrity standards ever.
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