Erin Pohan on Building an Accounting Firm With Boundaries, Balance, and Boldness

Probably not someone dancing to Daddy Yankee at a conference.Or someone who’ll tell you, without hesitation, that kindness is the legacy she wants to leave behind.

But that’s exactly who Erin Pohan is, and through her work at Upkeeping, her community-building with Wave Seattle, and her no-fluff, big-hearted voice on LinkedIn, she’s proving that accounting can be radically human, fiercely joyful, and deeply connected.

This is a story about self-permission, reinvention, and Erin didn’t hold back while sharing with Financial Cents.

Erin didn’t step into the world of accounting from a place of privilege or predictability. She was born to teenage parents in northern Miami and spent her early years navigating instability.

“My mom left my dad just before I turned five,” she shared. “We moved to Cleveland, Ohio, and I lived most of my life there until we moved again in high school.”

That move right in the middle of her junior year ripped her from the friends and familiarity of her small Cleveland high school and dropped her into a massive public school in northern Virginia.

“I shut down socially,” she said. “It was hard. I didn’t know how to connect anymore.”

But the seeds of who she would become were already quietly blooming. Even as a little girl, she was drawn to structure, numbers, systems. While other kids played house, Erin played office. And not just any office, the accounting office.

From Marketing Major to Accounting Convert

Erin didn’t start college thinking she’d be an accountant. She chased a dream of marketing and entrepreneurship until she took Accounting 101.

“I was the only one in the class who loved it,” she laughed. “Everyone else was struggling, and I was like, ‘This is fun. This makes sense to me.’”

That single class shifted her entire trajectory. She pivoted from marketing to accounting, eventually earning both her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in the field. What started with a curious affinity for numbers quickly became a lifelong career.

But what Erin didn’t yet know was that her relationship with accounting, like many of us with our careers, would evolve. And eventually, she’d need to carve out a version of it that made room for her whole self.

Breaking the Mold: Accounting with Personality

Sometimes, we like to think that Accounting has rules. Unspoken ones.

Keep it serious and play it safe. Don’t be too loud or too bold.

It was only when Erin started her own firm, Upkeeping, that she realized she no longer needed permission to be herself. “I’m a little cheeky. I think I’m fun. But for years, I kept that part of me separate. I didn’t think it belonged in accounting.” But everything changed the moment she started showing up as herself—on LinkedIn, in client calls, in community spaces. “You can be anyone you want to be in this industry,” she said. “Your people will find you.”

She stopped shrinking, and others started noticing.

The night it all really shifted, Erin wasn’t even at work.

She was at QuickBooks Connect, in a ballroom full of accountants dancing to Pitbull and Daddy Yankee. “I’m Puerto Rican,” she laughed. “I saw them dancing and thought, wait, we’re allowed to have fun? We can do both?”

She left that night with a new idea: what if there were more spaces where accountants could just be real?

That spark stayed with her. Over the next few years, through more conferences and conversations. it quietly built. Nearly three years later, she hosted her first local meetup in Seattle, just an evening event. But the response was electric. “There was this momentum,” she said. “People kept asking, what’s next?”

Instead of waiting for someone else to build it, Erin built it herself, live on LinkedIn. She started talking openly about launching a women-led accounting conference in Seattle. Within months, 65 women from 10 states (and Canada) flew in for the one-day “micro-conference.” They laughed, cried, learned, hugged.

Letting Go to Make Room

For most people, work-life balance is a vague, feel-good concept—something you hear on podcasts or scribble in a journal but never quite implement. For Erin, it became a hard line in the sand.

At the start of the year, she was working over 70 hours a week. Nights. Weekends. Late hours after the kids went to bed. It was the kind of pace that quietly steals your joy, even when everything “looks fine” on the outside.

But deep down, Erin knew: the pace was unsustainable. Something had to give, and it wasn’t going to be her health, her family, or her presence.

So she did the unthinkable by letting go of her biggest client.

It wasn’t just that one account, either. Erin also began auditing her client list for fit, not just revenue.

She bravely decided to part ways with clients who placed rigid demands on her time or pushed against the values she wanted to protect, freedom, flexibility, and family-first boundaries.

Quiet Mornings, Client Work, and Spooky Season

Now, Erin’s mornings are deliberately slow. While her husband—now a full-time stay-at-home dad—handles the kids’ school prep, she takes time to ease into the day with coffee or tea and a book. “I’ve been working on boundaries,” she shares, including not checking emails until she’s fully transitioned into work mode.

Even though her commute is just a few steps to her home office, she insists on getting ready for the day; shower, dressed, intentional. “It helps me feel like I’m arriving at work, not just floating into it.”

Once the day begins, she moves through client meetings and firm work with calm precision. No chaos. No reactive scrambling. She’s replaced urgency with structure.

By afternoon, the kids are home. They know the rhythm: homework, snacks, activities. And since it’s October, that means one thing: spooky movies. Erin hates them but watches anyway. “It’s dumb and fun,” she admits, laughing, “just one of those rituals we’ve made our own.”

Late nights sometimes pull her back to work, not from pressure but inspiration. “My brain turns on around 9 PM,” she says. “But now, it’s because I want to, not because I’m drowning.” If she needs a boost, she grabs a handful of her son’s Goldfish crackers, her unofficial work snack of choice.

The Legacy She Wants to Leave, and the One She’s Already Building

When Erin thinks about legacy, she doesn’t talk about revenue goals or scaling her firm. She talks about kindness. “I want people to remember me for being kind,” she says simply, then adds, “and to know that if I’m speaking their name in a room they’re not in, it’s all high praises.”

Erin is choosing a different path, one rooted in generosity and advocacy. She believes in spotlighting others, celebrating their growth, and creating spaces where people feel seen long before they feel successful.

“I think everyone should know people are screaming their names in rooms they haven’t entered yet,” she says.

That belief is woven into everything she touches, whether it’s through Upkeeping’s hands-on client care or the community-first spirit of Wave Seattle. Erin isn’t just building a career. She’s building a culture. One where kindness is a strategy, and connection is the currency that matters most.