Balancing an apprenticeship with caring for her twin sister, Rachel Harris’s entry into the profession was as unconventional as her approach to accountancy itself. Ahead of her keynote speech at the ICAS Practice Conference, the entrepreneur, mentor, content creator and, yes, accountant, talks disability, disruption and attracting young talent to the profession
Words: Jane Renton
Sitting beside a shell-pink chair, beneath a cool, neon-pink “accountant_she” sign, Rachel Harris has the kind of infectious energy seldom associated with, well, accountants. But this sunny, approachable and passionate content creator, author, TEDx speaker, business owner, bursary founder and award-winner (PQ Magazine’s Accountancy Personality of the Year 2023) is a proud disrupter of preconceptions of both what it is to be an accountant and how it should feel to hire one.
Aged just 30, Harris is the keynote speaker at this year’s ICAS Practice Conference, to be held in Edinburgh on 5 June. She has built the firm she co-created with husband (and chartered accountant) James Harris, striveX, into a seven-figure business. She also has more than 57,000 followers for her accountant_she Instagram, which dispenses friendly financial advice together with cheerful wellbeing and brand-building. Unsurprisingly, she has a long list of applicants eager to work for her.
Most of all, this absolute antithesis of the “stale, pale, male” stereotype is on a mission. Her aim – to open up the possibilities of a field that can take you anywhere from regular involvement with a blue-chip company to advising a content creator about the feasibility of claiming tax relief on their plastic surgery.
And as if these day-to-day demands weren’t enough, Harris is helping to level the playing field for a range of people looking to enter accountancy – by creating the first corporate bursary scheme to fully fund a student through AAT levels 2–4.
For a profession to become fully inclusive, it has to embody those principles where women, carers and people from diverse communities and backgrounds see themselves reflected and able not just to survive but thrive. As Harris says: “You can only be what you can see.” Now fully in the spotlight, what formed that young person who was waiting in the wings?