Passion Times Two: Jeanne Tran

A perfect job is hard to find, but when a passion for a profession collides with a passion for an employer, some would say perfection has been found. Jeanne Tran, Accounting Manager at Action Property Management, is one of the fortunate ones who has found herself in that exact situation. 

Jeanne discovered the field of accounting while enrolled in a high school business class. From the way numbers fit together when she balanced a checkbook to creating a budget, she was intrigued. When graduation came, she was ready to pursue the subject even further at Cal State Fullerton.

While in college, Jeanne worked as a back office accountant for the Cal State Fullerton Foundation, an on-campus organization that managed the accounting needs of various businesses around the campus. Each day she tallied cash and credit card receipts and input the totals into the accounting system. She then used that information to create financial reports for the various entities. As she made the numbers work day in and day out, her passion for the profession grew stronger and stronger. 

After college, Jeanne pursued a career in real estate accounting and accepted a position with a small firm, The Pres Companies, in Newport Beach. She enjoyed the close knit feeling of the small office, but wanted more opportunities so she eventually decided to branch out.

Her next stop was with the Irvine Company as a staff accountant in the commercial high-rise division. The experience there was the exact opposite of her first job. She actually found working for a well-funded employer to be almost boring. There were numerous accountants on the job and not enough work to go around. 

In 2009 she again decided to move on, this time accepting a temporary real estate accounting role with CB Richard Ellis. Her superiors there were impressed with her work and eventually offered her a full time position, but it came with strings attached. The accounting division would be moving out of state and Jeanne wasn’t willing to make that move. Fortunately, around that same time, her name came across the desk of one of Action’s recruiters who gave her a call. 

Jeanne was intrigued by what the recruiter had to say and decided to follow up with a formal interview. When the offer of employment was ultimately presented to her, she was left with just one simple question: Will this job align my passion for my profession with a passion for my employer? The answer was a resounding yes.

By 2012 she had been promoted to Senior Accountant followed by a promotion to Accounting Manager in May 2021. Today she helps to oversee a team of seventeen accountants who work together to track all the financial data that pours in from the approximately 328 HOA accounts that Action manages. The team then uses that data to prepare financial reports for each of their clients’ monthly board meetings. 

While Jeanne loves working behind-the-scenes with numbers, she also enjoys sharing information with people face-to-face. Whenever an HOA board wants a more detailed analysis, she will personally attend their meeting and unpack the data for them. These meetings allow her to put faces to the numbers and serve as a reminder that what she does is really about the people whose lives are impacted by those numbers every single day.

“I enjoy showing the financials and calming their concerns,” Jeanne said about her role at board meetings. “I always walk away form those meetings knowing that we did our best to help the clients.”

Much of her free times revolves around her ten-year-old son, Bradley. She’s also mastered the art of Ikea furniture assembly and enjoys playing Tetris on her original Nintendo Gameboy. As a creative outlet, she also runs a small online boutique. When she really wants to relax, a good Agatha Christie mystery book often proves to be the best option, but she has also been known to binge watch Gilmore Girls from time to time. 

For Jeanne, life is all about your attitude and how you choose to react to the triumphs and challenges. On a professional level, however, it’s all about finding the intersection of two passions and loving every minute of it.