Sehan - Builder, Vancouver

01 - Most recent

KPMG Canada

Staff Accountant, Financial Institutions & Real Estate · Sep 2025 – Apr 2026 · 8 mos · Vancouver, BC

8 months in the audit trenches.

Investment funds, mortgage corporations, credit unions - basically every flavor of financial institution you can audit as a first co-op.

What I actually learned:

→ How to spread financials and tie them out to the cent. GL tie-outs, XLOOKUPs, pivot tables, RGL testing, partner capital reconciliations - the boring stuff that quietly decides whether a financial statement is real or just looks real.
→ How to run a 238-confirmation cycle without losing my mind. Banks, mortgages, signers, follow-ups, paper confirmations for the ones who ghost - Confirmation.com became my personality for a month.
→ Walkthroughs across equity, cash, redemptions, dividends, related party disclosures. Learned that the people who run the cleanest walkthroughs are the ones who actually ask "but why does this happen?" instead of just documenting that it does.
→ MNS, RMM, trial balance recs, dividend testing, cash flow validation - the audit vocabulary that recruiters in FI roles scan for in seconds.

The real takeaway: audit is 30% technical and 70% organization. The seniors who closed the cleanest review notes weren't the smartest, they were the most disciplined. Came out of this with way more respect for the work than I had going in.

02 - Certification

CFA Institute - Level I Passed

August 2025

Passed Level I at 21. ~300 hours, mostly between school terms and KPMG prep.

Ethics, quant, econ, FRA, corporate issuers, equity, fixed income, derivatives, alts, portfolio management - covered all of it.

Not a shortcut. Not a vibe. Just reps.

Level II when the timing's right.

ICICI Bank Canada

Corporate Banking Analyst · May 2024 – Aug 2024 · 4 mos · Vancouver, BC

My first real finance job.

Spent the summer on credit risk, figuring out how banks actually decide who gets capital.

What I actually learned:

→ How to read a financial statement like a credit analyst, not a textbook. DSCR, LTV, interest coverage, leverage ratios - and more importantly, when each one matters and when it's just noise.
→ How to spread a credit file. 40+ clients across SMEs, oil & gas, and commercial real estate. 50+ financial statements. S&P rating methodology. Covenant review.
→ How a $100M+ corporate portfolio actually gets monitored - the gap between "the model says this" and "the relationship manager argues this in committee" is way bigger than school prepares you for.
→ How to build a credit memo that informs a real decision, not just an academic exercise.

The real takeaway: credit looks like math, it's actually judgment. The numbers tell you the story, but the loan officer's read on management, the cycle, and downside risk is what closes the deal. This is the summer finance went from theoretical to physical for me.

Telus Communications

Sales Consultant · Jan 2024 – Jun 2024 · 6 mos · Vancouver, BC

Joined Telus to learn one thing: how to talk to strangers and get them to say yes.

Door-to-door, mall booths, lobby setups. PureFibre, mobility, security. 200+ conversations a day. 80+ closes in 3 months. Contributed to a 30% lift in regional sales.

What I actually learned:

→ Most "no's" aren't no's - they're "I don't trust you yet."
→ A consultative approach beats a hard pitch every time. I closed the most when I asked what wasn't working, not when I read the script.
→ Resilience compounds. Day 1 was brutal. Day 60 felt natural. Day 120 I was training new hires.
→ Reading a room in real time is a muscle. Most people never train it.

Not a finance job. But this is where the idea for 20 Conversations a Day started forming - watching how much one well-framed pitch could shift someone's entire day, and how rarely most people get it right.

The job that taught me cold outreach is a skill, not a personality trait.

05 - The rest

Everything else

The roles that weren't prestigious but taught me the most.

→ CUS UBC Vancouver - Ombudsperson & Executive Board Director (Apr 2024 – Mar 2025)
Mediated student-faculty disputes at Sauder. Learned that most people aren't asking for what they actually want - the job was figuring out what was underneath.
→ Sauder Management Consulting Club - Financial Analyst (Sep 2023 – Apr 2024)
Market research, competitive analysis, regression-based forecasting models for a logistics division and a local fintech. First time my analysis went past a professor and into a real decision.
→ AIESEC UBC - Financial Analyst (Jan 2024 – Apr 2024)
Ran chapter budgeting and financial ops. Monthly close, variance analysis, reporting up. Numbers were small - the discipline was the point.
→ AIESEC UBC - Director of Corporate Relations (Sep 2023 – Dec 2023)
Led the Incoming Global Talent team. Built a pipeline of 12–16 corporate partnerships through cold outreach. Direct line from this role to me eventually building 20 Conversations a Day.
→ Browns Socialhouse - Line Cook (Sep 2023 – Dec 2023)
Worked the line at Browns Crafthouse UBC. Multiple stations, fine dining tempo. Single most useful job I've had for staying calm under pressure. Audit deadlines don't hit like a Saturday dinner rush.
→ World Vision UBC - Fundraising Financial Analyst (May 2023 – Aug 2023)
Budgeting and analysis for fundraising campaigns. Learned that in cause-driven finance, every spend has to mean something to the person who gave you the money.
→ CanMadeEasy - Financial Analyst (May 2023 – Aug 2023)
$8M+ in client accounts, 5+ audit engagements. Risk assessment, internal control testing, substantive procedures. First taste of anything audit-adjacent - foundation for KPMG two years later.
→ Pragati Gurgaon NGO - FP&A Intern (May 2022 – Aug 2022)
Crowdfunding and MUN initiatives that raised ₹4.65L for 900+ students during COVID. First real finance role. Learned how money actually reaches people when systems break.
→ Pathways World School - Student Body President (May 2019 – Apr 2022)
Elected three years running. Still the role that taught me the most about leadership - what it means to be accountable to a community that didn't have to listen to you.
→ Ceres MUN - Secretary General (Jan 2020 – Aug 2020)
Founded and ran an independent MUN conference at 16. $1,000 raised, 120+ delegates, guest speakers with 1M+ combined reach. First time I shipped something. Set the pattern for everything after.

The thread tying these together

Most of them weren't prestigious. Some of them barely paid. A few of them weren't even finance. But each one taught me something I now use daily - how to spread a number, run a campaign, write a cold email that doesn't suck, stay calm when it's chaos, and ship things that didn't exist yesterday.