DA alumnus Filip Taseski on his career since graduating from MAIS 14 in 2011
DA: Following your studies at the DA, you became Senior in Assurance at Ernst & Young EY. What exactly are your responsibilities on the job and how did your career path look like so far?
Filip Taseski: Currently, I am senior manager within Assurance advisory at EY where I primarily work with advising clients to navigate complex financial reporting matters. Many projects I work with a triggered by transaction that occurred, or the client plans to enter into. The nature of these projects is such that require specialized skills form various subject matters and typically my role is to build and steer a team to deliver the project. Beside the external role I have, internally work as counselor to younger colleagues, often facilitate trainings and engage with assurance quality control.
What I do today, is in the very heart of what EY is, but is a very different role from how everything has started. Like many young professionals that start their careers in a Big4 company, mine began on an entry-level, junior position in the office in Skopje, Macedonia. It was position in what at the time was called Business Tax Compliance (BTC) sub-service line (today they call it Global Reporting Compliance). My first assignments were to assist clients with their statutory financial reporting and assist with tax reporting. The clients were well knowing global brands that had operations in Macedonia. The team I worked with, was great. The manager that recruited me is one of the most exemplary supervisors I have worked with. She gave me a chance and taught me the first lesson of what makes truly great managers, which is to give chances to people to excel, and grow because when they excel, you grow with them together.
After almost two years in BTC, I moved to audit and assurance. My career took me from auditing smaller companies in Macedonia to being senior manager of group audits of global companies. In 2017, I had a chance to participate in 2-year rotation program with the office in Stockholm. The colleagues in Stockholm were kind enough to offer opportunity to join them on permanent basis. Sweden become our new home, and I stayed at EY. Today, I am still part of Assurance, but less audit focused and more advisory focused. The journey in EY I can only described as steep learning curve. In between, I have obtained ACCA qualification and became certified auditor in Macedonia.
Have you always been interested in this specific career, or has this interest developed over time?
During my studies I have always had my professional interests split in between two major fields: international relations and financial reporting. During undergraduate studies, I did double major in these two fields and then the DA came as great opportunity to pursue master’s degree in interdisciplinary program. After my studies, I always wanted to work for big organization, either Big4 or an international organization. Thus, EY came as very natural choice for me.
Audit is my first great professional passion. An audit project might result with just one page of statement, but that statement aims to build trust between companies and investors. So, for me being an auditor comes with big public responsibility. Then the vast audit experience ignite curiosity in me how would be if I try consulting companies to take their market reporting to highest standards instead of auditing them.
How has the DA helped you develop your career?
DA has been exceptional experience for me that did not only shape my career but shaped my views. DA made me to understand that individuals have many roles and identities and that makes us all unique. The DA gave me friendships that cross borders and engraved in me the idea that diversity in teams can only bring excellence and should never be seen as hindrance.
If I dare to single out several ways how the DA helped me in my career development, I will say:
1. Coming from an international school it made very easy for me to fit in global company as EY and to work with cross-border teams.
2. The MAIS program is interdisciplinary in nature which prepares you to investigate and explain phenomena from different angles and preps you to critically think, rather to seek the right or wrong answers and always try to see both the big picture and the small pieces and parts. Many of the projects I work with relate to clients having expansion plans towards stock markets and being able to read the geopolitical and macroeconomic situation is as important as understanding internal strengths and weaknesses of a client when advising them.
3. Managing expectations proved to be key skill and believe it or not, diplomacy is nothing but managing expectations, so all the soft skills that DA students are trained into comes as quite handy.
Is there a specific skill set taught at the DA that is particularly useful for your current job?
There is one set of knowledge that I am particularly glad I acquired at the DA. Throughout the years, although I worked primarily with global companies, quite often I had to conduct assurance projects over projects that were funded by the EU. And this started from pre-accession instrument funded projects in Macedonia and flowed me in Sweden on more complex projects such as Horizon and Innovation Fund. The training in EU legislation and institutions was key for me to easily understand the requirements imposed by the EU and establish effective communication between the client and their donor.
Where do you think the future will take you?
If there is learning curve ahead of me, if I am surrounded by colleagues that shine with inspiration, it will always be hard for me to see future outside EY. The company is truly global and have endless opportunities. When I started studying international relations, the common view was that we live in unipolar and globalized world. Now seems that this was just a transitory phase. I feel we live in a world of conflicting values and ideas: on one side galloping towards new technological discoveries that sometimes feels uncontrolled and on the other hand a world that seems that has stopped investing in many strategic R&D areas. Such environment is not only challenges for political leaders, but also for corporate leaders. Global companies face with significantly larger risks than a decade ago. I see myself in advising my clients to navigate the turbulent waters of the day.
[July 2025]