How one grad made a career out of talking taxes
As a seasoned income tax accountant, Gael Melville knows how tough it is to make sense of financial jargon. She’s now a master at breaking down complex information in writing, thanks to SFU’s Technical Communication Certificate.
Gael has worked for global accounting firm EY her entire career, first in Scotland before her move to Canada. After starting her Canadian career as an accountant, a year later she landed a role in EY’s electronic publishing group.
Now a senior manager of tax editorial, Gael oversees several writing projects, from technical tax summaries for fellow accountants to newsletters for the general public. Her main goal? Ensuring that reading about finance topics won’t make people’s heads spin.
Realizing the academic writing style she learned in university wasn’t useful for delivering a message to a general audience, Gael began the search for professional training—and found what she needed in SFU’s Technical Communication program.
“I realized pretty late in my career that what I was doing was technical writing and I never had any formal training in it,” she recalls.
The hands-on nature of her classes helped her apply what she learned to her work. But the program also challenged Gael creatively as a writer.
“The Technical Writing: Advanced Workshop course made me challenge everything I ever knew about writing,” Gael says. “It’s not about producing a perfect first draft; it’s about producing any first draft and working to make it suit what you need.”
She encourages anyone considering the certificate program to take their time with their learning journey. By taking breaks between courses during busy periods at her full-time job, she was better able to absorb the concepts she learned and use them in her everyday work.
For Gael, a technical writing career has allowed her to connect her tax and accounting expertise with her love for the written word.
“If you’re a good technical writer, you can explain something to yourself first and then to many other people,” she explains.
“That’s the part that I love: the need to break something down and really understand it well before you communicate it.”
By Bernice Puzon