Meet the Team: Senior Accountant, Sasha Pillay

Sasha Pillay joined Insource four years ago as a Staff Accountant I, not long after relocating to the US, with experience behind her but no local work history and no network to lean on. Today she is a Senior Accountant working predominantly with nonprofit clients, running the day-to-day accounting function for several organizations at once and training the Staff Accountants coming up behind her. We sat down with Sasha to talk about growth, the interview that won her over, and why Mondays don’t fill her with dread.

Please introduce yourself, and tell us a bit about your role at Insource.

“I’m Sasha, and I’m a Senior Accountant. In practice, that means I act as the accounting function for several nonprofit organizations at once: month-end close, payroll, reconciliations, and the financial reporting their Executive Directors and Boards rely on to make decisions. Every client is at a different stage and uses different systems, so no two days look quite the same. Alongside the client work, I train and review our Staff Accountants, which has quietly become one of the parts of the job I enjoy most.”

How did you find Insource?

“I found the role on Indeed. I’d recently arrived in the US and was more or less starting from scratch professionally. I was looking for an entry-level position at a company that would actually invest in me, rather than one just looking to fill a seat. Honestly, the posting made me laugh, which is not something you can usually say about a job ad. It asked for someone with a good sense of humor, and it said that technical skills can be taught, but you cannot teach someone to be a good human being. Coming from where I was, with no US experience and no certainty anyone would take a chance on me, that was exactly what I needed to read.”

How did the interview process compare to others you’d experienced?

“Going through multiple rounds was a first for me. Usually it’s one or two conversations: a recruiter, maybe a manager, and you’re done. At Insource I met the team leads, then the VPs, and then the president, and these weren’t quick calls either. They were an hour each. For an entry-level role, that told me something. A company that gives up that much of its senior people’s time to get to know a candidate clearly takes the people it hires seriously. I remember interviewing with Bruce and we ended up talking about load shedding in South Africa. I was explaining what it is, and telling him how much I love having power and water. That was the interview. I left thinking, they actually care who I am as a person, not just what’s on my résumé.”

How supported did you feel during the recruitment process?

“Very supported. From my first call with HR, I explained that I was new to the country and didn’t really know how the process was meant to work, and they walked me through every stage: who I’d be meeting, what each round was for, what to expect on compensation and the work itself. When you’re new to a country and unsure of the rules, being kept in the loop takes a huge amount of the anxiety out of it. I never felt left to guess.”

What were your main goals going in?

“I wanted my work to be recognized and valued, and I wanted room to grow rather than to be kept in one lane. It was never just about paying the bills. I wanted to feel part of something bigger, and to be the person who makes finance feel approachable. A lot of the people I work with at our clients aren’t finance people, and they shouldn’t have to be to understand their own numbers. Part of my job is closing that gap.”

What was your biggest challenge?

“My own nerves, honestly. I worried I wouldn’t fit in, and that my experience wouldn’t count for much because it hadn’t been earned here. There was a real learning curve too. US payroll rules, state filings, and the way nonprofit accounting works were all new to me. I genuinely didn’t understand at first why you’d need to register in different states for different employees. What got me through it was being able to ask questions without ever feeling judged, and being given more responsibility as I was ready for it, not all at once. Looking back, the challenge was far more in my head than because of anything the team did.”

How were your first few weeks, and what helped you settle in?

“They’re a bit of a blur, they went so fast. The first week is onboarding, and rather than being thrown at a client on day one, I was properly introduced to the systems we use, like our timesheets and Bill.com, and to the team. People checked in on me constantly, and not just in week one. A month in, colleagues were still asking how I was finding things and what they could help with. The training on the systems was what helped most: by the time I started on a client, I felt prepared, not left to flounder.”

What’s your day-to-day like now?

“Where I was once the one being trained, I’m now responsible for training Staff Accountants and reviewing their work. Day to day I run the accounting for several nonprofit clients, and I’m often the first person a client comes to with a question, which is a real shift from my early days when everything went through my manager. I still spend a good amount of time learning new systems, because every client’s setup is different. The biggest change, though, is confidence. I trust my own judgment now in a way I simply didn’t when I started.”

What opportunities have been available to you?

“A lot of them, and not all formal. I started as a Staff Accountant I and was promoted within about seven months, then again eight or nine months later. Every new client brings a new system or a new type of organization to learn, which is its own kind of development. Right now I’m working on presenting to larger groups: I’ve co-hosted a training session for the whole finance team, and I lead our monthly Staff and Senior Accountant meetings. I’ve just started a monthly standards series in those meetings, where we take one accounting standard at a time and work through what it actually means for our day-to-day work. Insource was happy to let me build that from an idea, which is telling. If you show an interest in something here, there’s usually room to run with it.”

What made you decide to accept the role?

“The role was, and still is, fully remote, which mattered a great deal to me. I didn’t have my US driver’s license at the time, and I’ll admit US public transport doesn’t quite compare to the UK’s. But the deciding factor was the people. Everyone I spoke to came across as a real human being rather than a corporate robot reading from a script, and I could tell these were people I’d actually want to spend my days with. Nothing else I was looking at compared.”

What work are you most proud of?

“Building the accounting function for a startup client from the ground up. When I started at Insource I was stepping into established clients with systems already in place, but this one I built from scratch: the chart of accounts, the accounting system, the payroll provider, the bank, all of it. We walked every step with the client. I completely own that, and seeing it running month after month is satisfying in a way routine work isn’t. The other thing is the nature of our clients. One of mine does medical research and works on vaccines. I’m doing finance and accounting, but it makes me feel like I’m helping find a cure for TB, like I’m contributing to something that does real good in the world. You hear people talk about the Sunday blues. For me, on a Monday morning, I feel great.”

What would you say to someone considering applying to Insource?

“Just do it. People go down a job posting ticking off what they can and can’t do, and if they don’t tick every box they don’t apply. Apply anyway. I didn’t tick every box either, and here I am four years on, a Senior Accountant. Insource hires for the person as much as the résumé, and the technical gaps get closed with training. You’ll be trusted with real responsibility early, you’ll have people around you who want you to do well, and you’ll be working for organizations doing genuinely good work.”

Outside of work, what do you do for fun?

“My family is very big on board games. Settlers of Catan is our most played by far, though we play plenty of others too. We’re also into tennis and pickleball, and I love exploring new places and going on adventures around New England with my husband and our two dogs.”

Could Insource be the right fit for you?

Sasha’s story is a familiar one at Insource: hired for who she is as much as what she knew, supported from the first call, and given the room to grow into a role she couldn’t have imagined on day one. If you value meaningful work, real investment in your development, and colleagues who make time for you at every level, we’d love to hear from you. Take a look at our current openings, and apply, even if you don’t tick every box.