Young Palauan professional chooses to return home to help

By: L.N. Reklai

Palau gains one of its gifted children back. Genesis Urimech Roberto, a Certified Public Accountant (CPA) who just become one of the only two Palauan CPAs in the country, chose come home after an illustrious career abroad.

Ms. Roberto, 28 year old daughter of Martina and Ben Roberto of Angaur, joins Palau’s Office of Public Auditor as an Audit Manager.

Ms. Roberto graduated from Brigham Young University in Hawaii with BS in Accounting in 2010.  While working for her CPA, she worked with one of the top five accounting firms in Hawaii auditing complex governmental entities such as County of Maui and State Department of Education and Health and Human Services.

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She was hired in 2015 by Grant Thornton LLP, the seventh largest accounting and professional services firm in the world. Her work involved auditing of large privately held and publicly traded companies.

She passed four parts of her CPA exams within 2 year and earned her CPA license in Hawaii.

On why she chose to return home, she stated, “I reassessed my priorities, and decided that it would be best to be closer to family for the time being. Luckily, OPA was seeking qualified CPA to be an Audit Manager and the timing worked well.”

“ I wanted to share with the youth and prospective students is that through hard work and determination, anything is possible. Venture out and see the world, but don’t forget to come back and share what you learned and experienced with our people and government. There were challenging times in my career where I wanted to give up, but it’s through those tough times when you find out how strong you are built and how much potential you have. It’s exciting to be back in Palau, to see things from a different lens, and to be able to contribute to the betterment of our island. I hope I can also inspire Palauans who are abroad who also are seeking a sense of fulfillment, to consider coming back home and help to build a self-reliant, persevering nation for ourselves and generations to come,” stated Ms. Genesis U. Roberto. [/restrict]