Biography
Dr Rachel Findlay is a Lecturer in Accountancy at Edinburgh Napier University Business School, a Chartered Accountant, and Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. From 2007 to 2010, she was a lecturer in Business Law, Auditing and Finance at her professional body, the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Scotland (ICAS). From 2017 until 2020 she was the BA Honours in Accounting Degree Programme Leader at Edinburgh Napier University where she led the professionally accredited Auditing module and is a former module leader in Taxation. She continues to teach auditing, taxation, finance, financial technology and banking and accounting as a profession at undergraduate and masters levels.
Rachel trained as a Chartered Accountant with Ernst and Young in Glasgow specialising in financial services auditing. She qualified in 1993 as a member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants Scotland.
She graduated with an honours degree in Music at the University of Glasgow, before completing a post graduate diploma in accountancy at the University of Strathclyde Business School in 1990. One of the first non-accounting degree graduates to be accepted as a CA trainee she trained as a C.A. with Ernst and Young in Glasgow before transferring to Ernst and Young in Luxembourg as an auditor of investment funds and banks. She subsequently worked for JPMorgan in Luxembourg and returned to Scotland to take up a management post at Scottish Amicable (Prudential). State Street Banking Corporation subsequently hired Rachel to lead their Trustee Investments Audit Team for the UK. As a Vice President at State Street she also served on the Trustee company’s Board as Company Secretary. After a move as Senior Manager and Specialist Internal Auditor at Lloyds Banking Group, Rachel took up an academic role in March 2007 to work as a lecturer and examiner for ICAS. In 2010 Rachel started her University lectureship and completed a Masters in Accountancy (researching UK Income Taxation Complexity). This was followed by completion of her Doctoral thesis in International Accounting Education in October 2017.
She has contributed to organisations outside of university including as Treasurer of the Scottish Episcopal Church Edinburgh Diocese, the Junior Chamber of Commerce and is currently a Member of the Audit Committee of the Royal College of Surgeons in Edinburgh.