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Jamie Cottage

Tax Manager
Duban, Sattler, & Associates
Los Angeles, CA

 

Jamie Cottage, tax manager at Duban, Sattler, & Associates in Los Angeles has news for anyone who thinks accounting is just a bunch of numbers. “There’s a lot of creativity and critical thinking that goes into it.”

Jamie ought to know – even his path to his current position has been creative. “My last year in college, I was playing around on Craigslist and came across an ad for an administrative assistant at a local accounting firm.” He applied for the job, got it, handled admin tasks for about a year, worked his butt off and was promoted to an accountant position when he graduated.

“Knowing the firm’s administrative workings helped a lot,” he says. “Also, the senior accountants remembered the help I’d given them in my previous position and went out of their way to see that I made it as an accountant.” As a bonus, Jamie even got help from his old friends on the administrative team, who took pride in seeing "one of their own" climbing the ranks.

These days, he uses his creativity and critical thinking to help shape his clients’ financial futures, which is a favorite part of the career for Jamie. (He also gets to spend about a month of the year in Hawaii, where many of his clients are based. He brings his dog along for hikes up the sides of volcanoes – how cool is that?)

Not surprisingly, Jamie enjoys the unpredictability of his “fruitful, fulfilling” career. “This path offers major flexibility,” he says. “You can settle down doing what you love, or spend each day learning something new.”

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