Martha's situation
Martha is 44, an Executive Director at one of the world's largest accounting and advisory firms — a Big 4 practice in Zürich. For over a decade she has led CFO advisory engagements for major corporates: helping finance leaders restructure, transform, and future-proof their organisations. She holds a CFA. She can read a set of management accounts the way other people read a menu. Her clients are CFOs and finance directors at some of Switzerland's most significant firms, and they trust her completely.
The work is relentless in the way only consulting can be. Her hours don't end when the office closes — they end when the client's problem is solved, which is often not until late in the evening, and sometimes not at all that day. She is frequently on-site at client offices across Zürich, sometimes travelling. Her daughter is eight years old. There are evenings — too many of them — when Martha gets home after bedtime. She stands in the doorway of her daughter's room in the dark and tells herself it won't always be like this.
She isn't going to quit tomorrow. She has financial commitments, a strong sense of responsibility, and — if she's honest — a professional identity that is deeply tangled up in being excellent at a demanding job. But something has shifted. She has spent years building other people's financial clarity. And lately she keeps thinking about a different kind of client entirely: not a CFO at a firm with hundreds of millions on the balance sheet, but a woman like her — a few years behind, staring at her own finances, not knowing where to start.