Totum’s Rising Star Awards ran for its third year in 2024, recognising the best of upcoming talent in HR, marketing and business development and finance. We spoke with this year’s winner and highly commended finance rising stars, to learn about their career aspirations and recognition from their firms.
Finance’s importance to a firm’s organisational and strategic success has long been acknowledged, but technological change, challenging economies and increased responsibilities means rising talent has plenty of scope to develop.
Totum’s Rising Star Awards 2024 recognises the best of upcoming talent in the sector, and we received an impressive array of nominations.
However, our two winners stood out for their ability to problem-solve, switch effortlessly between roles and remits and build new skills. Meet two future stars of finance in the legal sector.
Rising Star Award winner: Jasmine Alefounder, Assistant Financial Accountant, Kennedys
Having previously excelled in a financial operations role within Kennedys’ billing team, Jasmine Alefounder took the courageous decision to change career path and move into a training position in the firm’s Group Financial Reporting team – despite having no previous account experience.
How did she land the role? By taking a proactive approach to her own career development. Back in 2020, Alefounder began to feel like she had hit the ceiling with her work in billing, having worked in the department for a number of years, even serving as Billing Manager. She reached out to Kennedys CFO Jo Woods to discuss different roles in finance, before talking to other people who moved departments. Ultimately, Woods offered Alefounder a job in her new team, as well as the opportunity to study her CIMA qualification.
“Jo saved me. I never imagined she would offer me a job in another team – I thought I’d have to leave Kennedys to move roles, and I didn’t want to do that. I started afresh when I moved over,” says Alefounder.
Alefounder recently returned to the business after a period away on maternity leave. As someone who is extremely career-minded and driven, learning how to balance home life with work was yet another new challenge to overcome.
“When I came back from maternity leave, I was just looking to find my feet again. I give credit to Kennedys for helping me settle back in – they have been amazing. I’ve been able to take on a lot of projects and I am so lucky to work here,” says Alefounder.
One of the projects Alefounder took on was ownership of the firm’s intercompany process, which involves understanding both legacy CJB processes and new system-led ICB billing, settlements, reconciliations and reporting. She also took the lead on management accounts work for Kennedys’ Dubai, Oman and Israel offices, as well as leading the local Oman audit work – her first experience of an audit.
“I really enjoyed my first audit and found it really good for learning. It gave me a foundational understanding on some of the processes I had been working on for a few years. It underpinned why we do certain things. I found it really helpful as I like to know why I’m doing things,” she says.
Her nomination for a Totum Rising Star award came as a surprise, but outside recognition is always welcome, especially in the business services world.
“I was just trying to survive maternity leave, so the fact that I did such a good job to get nominated for an award was massive for me. It was confirmation I had made it,” says Alefounder.
“To then win it – I was speechless. When Totum’s Dee called me, he didn’t get many words out of me. It’s great for business services to be recognised,” she adds.
Her team agree. In his nomination, Alefounder’s manager Alex Kenward called her a “highly ambitious finance professional who we consider to be a true rising star of the Kennedys finance team”. The future continues to be bright for Totum’s Rising Star award winner.
Rising Star Awards highly commended: Gareth Hall, Assistant Management Accountant, Mills & Reeve LLP
Gareth Hall recently transitioned into a new role as an Assistant Management Accountant at Mills & Reeve, having spent several years with the firm in a finance operations role.
As part of his new role, Hall has led on the development and roll out of Mills & Reeve’s new financial reporting software, AFS. Using his enthusiasm for technology and problem-solving, Hall worked closely with external developers to solve some longstanding issues that were limiting the use of software in the firm, improving functionality, training colleagues and encouraging take up.
“In previous years, we’ve used manual spreadsheets for a lot of our month reporting. AFS was something that could make our jobs easier, but we understood implementing it would be something that would create a lot of work in the short term, but in the long term would improve efficiency,” says Hall.
Implementing the new software should save the firm significant time on budgeting, as well as improving its ability to present data and effectively report to the board. According to Hall’s manager Ben Sargent, his work on the project should generate cost savings for the firm and will be rolled out across additional areas of the business.
Providing space for personal development and interests is something Mills & Reeve have offered Hall throughout his career, he says.
In his previous role as a team leader in finance operations, the firm provided management training to aid his development, while also seconding him onto a project to implement new accounting software. Currently, he is studying for his CIMA qualification, with Hall saying “the firm has never turned me down for any development opportunity – they’ve been really fantastic.”
Working in finance is in Hall’s blood. His mother is an accountant and his dad wanted to be one. He enrolled on an AAT course straight out of school and has worked in accountancy teams ever since. Nevertheless, the Rising Stars nomination came as a pleasant surprise to Hall, with internal recognition making him proud.
Hall’s nomination lauds his generosity of time, ability to support colleagues and how he builds relationships, calling him “a pleasure to work with”.
Hall smiles when I put this to him, but agrees that building relationships is vital to growing into a new role.
“Growing a network is really important. Get to know people. In a law firm, so many parts and departments are interconnected and everyone is pulling together to achieve the same goals. Knowing people comes in handy down the line – especially if you need to call in favours,” he laughs.
We congratulate Gareth on his Highly Commended award and look forward to following his development in the future.
To get in touch with Totum’s finance team, contact Dee Deol at [email protected]
Our finance Rising Star Awards 2025 will be going ahead, with more information to follow at the end of this year. Visit our Rising Stars to learn more about the awards.