A profile
Diana Akhmerova
Founder of Akhmerova Advisory. CPA, polyglot, Tatar-born, Seattle-based.
Diana Akhmerova, CPA
Founder of Akhmerova Advisory. CPA, polyglot, Tatar-born, Seattle-based.
Diana Akhmerova, CPA
Diana didn’t take the usual path into public accounting. She came to the United States from Tatarstan, in Russia, as a young woman, and has spent the last two decades learning the craft from every angle — first as an auditor inside three large public accounting firms, then as a finance leader inside growing companies, and, since 2021, as the founder of her own practice in Seattle.
She raised her son as a single mother. The years that taught her the most about her clients’ lives were not the ones spent in conference rooms — they were the ones spent balancing the books at her own kitchen table, late at night, after a long day.
By the time she founded Akhmerova Advisory, most of the questions her clients bring to her were questions she had already lived through herself. That perspective is the reason this firm exists, and it is the perspective she tries to bring to every conversation.
What follows is a fuller version of her story — for prospective clients who, very reasonably, want to know the person before they pick up the phone.
Diana grew up in Tatarstan, a republic in Russia known for its warmth and its long tradition of hospitality. She came to the United States as a young woman, with little more than a willingness to work hard and a quiet trust that careful, patient effort would carry her where she needed to go. It mostly has.
She raised her son as a single mother — through school nights, tax seasons, and the long climb through her career. Those years taught her something no classroom could: how much steady, trustworthy financial guidance matters to a family trying to build something that will last. It is a feeling she still carries into every client conversation.
Through years of disciplined work, careful saving, and the same patient planning she now does for her clients, she has become a self-made millionaire. It is a milestone she mentions not to impress, but because clients deserve to know that the person guiding their finances has walked the path herself.
Diana began her career as an auditor at three of the world's largest accounting firms — PwC, EY, and BDO — auditing the kinds of companies you read about in the Wall Street Journal. She learned the craft of public accounting at scale, working with clients whose financial complexity rivaled the GDP of small nations.
She left to take on operating roles: first as Controller of a sustainability-focused startup, then as Vice President of Finance and Human Resources at a fast-growing data center company. Those years taught her something the audit room couldn't — what it actually feels like to be on the other side of the books, making real-time decisions with real-time consequences.
Diana founded the firm in 2021, on a simple conviction: that thoughtful, careful financial guidance — the kind usually reserved for the largest companies — should also be available to the small business owners, families, and professionals making the most consequential decisions of their financial lives.
What she built is small, on purpose. It is a principal-led practice, which simply means that when a client picks up the phone, the person on the other end is the CPA herself — not a junior associate, not a relationship manager. Less hierarchy. Less hand-off. More plain English. More care.
…the next step is the same as it is everywhere else on this site. A focused 15-minute consultation, on Diana's calendar, at no cost. She does the listening; you do the deciding.