Money as a tool for empowerment
Selina Gray helps clients approach financial management holistically
On a high school trip to Paris, Selina Gray CPA, CA looked up at the Eiffel Tower and had an epiphany. “I knew I wanted to continue to travel and would need a career that would make it possible,” she says.
Selina had long been interested in money: earning it by doing odd jobs in her small town and managing it as the bookkeeper for her father’s small construction business. She set her sights on accounting, earning a Bachelor of Commerce at the University of Saskatchewan.
Excited to launch her career, Selina moved to Calgary. She worked as a senior associate before taking on controller roles, and before she knew it, she was travelling to far-flung places like Dubai, Tunisia, Ethiopia, and the UK, living the cosmopolitan life she’d dreamed of. Selina was on track to become a CFO by her 30th birthday.
But it came at a cost. “I was working between 100 and 120 hours a week. I was always working,” says Selina. “My arms and legs started going numb and my stomach was always upset.”
She began a food regimen, but it didn’t help. Other symptoms appeared, like rashes, heart palpitations, and swollen ankles, which required her to swap out her heels for flip-flops in the office. Selina’s joints hurt so much she could barely get out of bed.
One day, she passed out in her office in Tunisia. Too sick to work, she flew back to Calgary for medical care. After three weeks recuperating in the hospital, Selina was finally diagnosed with Crohn’s disease, an autoimmune disorder.
“The illness was a curve ball,” she says. “I remember being in the hospital and really wanting to get back to work.”
However, the treatment plan she needed wasn’t available overseas, so Selina couldn’t go back to her old life. She knew she wanted to be an entrepreneur—one of the many goals she’d had since she was young—and decided to use the skills gained by her designation to help her do so.
Selina moved to Edmonton for a fresh start, and she worked a desk job for a year, while starting to build her own business, before giving birth to her first child. During her maternity leave, Selina focused on growing her business. Moneyboss Ltd. launched full time at the end of 2015.
Now, Selina helps clients, mainly women in leadership roles, develop healthy relationships with money, build more earnings, and optimize cash flow in their businesses. In her role as a “financial empowerment coach,” she’s equal parts financial coach and business mentor, helping people align their values and goals with their financial choices. The concept at the heart of it is an idea called conscious wealth.
“It’s starting to learn about the emotional impact of how we see our money and our lives, and those decisions we make about earning, spending, and saving,” she says. Selina wants clients to consider money as a tool—not an end goal.
“It’s learning to live a life that feels wealthy, so starting to ask, ‘What do I actually want? What brings me joy?’ In my life, I was striving to achieve only financial wealth, and it almost cost me my life,” says Selina. “Now I live a life and ask, ‘How can I embody more richness today?’”