NEW MEMBER SPOTLIGHT

Meet Germaine Perez, Director of Finance at PSM Partners

Welcome to EFBC! It’s great to meet you. Can you tell us a bit about your role at PSM Partners and what led you there?

I’ve been at PSM for seven years. Before that, I got my degree in accounting and worked in AR/AP roles, then joined a consulting firm owned by WPP, working in media finance. One day I got a LinkedIn message from Dan Picaro at PSM. I came in for a casual interview and was employee #30—the first woman in the company.

Wow, that must’ve been intimidating.

Very. It was all men at the time, but they welcomed me. I was hired as a controller, but there was no accounting team—just me. I had to build everything from scratch: invoicing, payroll, HR—even though I had no background in HR.

That’s a lot to take on

It was. The first few months were rough, but I stuck with it. I created all the processes, task lists, how-to guides. Seven years later, we’re still using them. My title evolved from Controller to Director of Finance. I now have a team: a senior accountant, an accounting clerk, and some shared HR support.

When I started we were 30 people—now we’re over 110. I’ve always advocated for more female presence, so I built a mostly female team. We now have more women across departments, including marketing and HR. It’s been really fulfilling.

You’ve clearly made a big impact.

Thank you. I brought a lot of structure from my public company background—everything gets documented and saved. Our CPA from Cray Kaiser even complimented how clean the books are. That’s something I’m really proud of.

What led you to EFBC?

Mike from PSM encouraged me to join to invest in myself. I’d been wanting continuing education—especially with how fast tech and finance are evolving. I’ve attended EFBC roundtables before, but never a Forum. After my test Forum, I really liked it—it was welcoming and the discussions felt relevant to

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