Fairygodboss of the Week: Michelle Löpez

Michelle Löpez left her c-level position to break free of the traditional workplace and follow her entrepreneurial passions. Now, as  Founder and Advisor at Breakaway Bookkeeping & Advising, she is leading a team in a culture she created with love. 

An advocate for blazing your own path, Löpez shared the one she took to CFO-turned-Founder. She also shared her best career advice for women, the personal challenge she overcame this year and the hobbies that keep her creative spark, well, sparking. Buckle up, because this is an inspiring read! 

Tell us a little about your career. How did you get where you are now?

As an eager graduate of International Marketing and Business, I took a position with an environmental company with global reach fresh out of college. Sounds like a dream job, right? Because I was one of the least paid and most available, I quickly rose in the ranks. I found myself in the accounting department working directly under the CFO and loving it. Numbers made sense to me: No gray, no opinions, just buckets of ratios. For a performance- based person, this was my sweet spot.

Then came the recession. Like many other companies in the ‘08 crash, they didn’t make it. Luckily, and through hard work, I found other positions providing accounting assistance and quickly grew my skill set and experience. Because I didn’t have the traditional accounting industry career trajectory, I was able to speak a language that business owners understood, while still providing Marie Kondo style bookkeeping and Jillian Michaels-esque performance metrics.