How Victoria Thayer is Revitalizing the Accounting Industry

Victoria Thayer started her accounting firm less than two years ago, but she has already made In Business Madison magazine’s 2025 Top 40 under 40 list and revenue generation app Ignition’s 2024 list of Top 50 Women in Accounting among other awards.

A Venezuelan immigrant and maid’s daughter, she came to the United States for college in 2010, her unwavering belief in the American Dream leading her to constantly strive for bigger and better.

While she studied chemical engineering at the University of Rochester in New York, she stumbled into accounting after she realized that she was not passionate about engineering and preferred the business courses she took for her minor. After graduation, she pursued a career in business and kept her options open.  

“I was looking for anything, and the first job I got was in accounting,” Victoria said. “I worked as a cost accountant. So that’s when I knew accounting [was for me].”

This first job inspired her love for accounting, specifically public accounting because it allowed her to build relationships with clients. She said she is excited about the idea of helping business founders pursue and finance their dreams.

“It seems so cool to me that they were able to create something from nothing,” she said. “So it’s almost like artists, like an artist has an idea and makes it come to reality.”

As she learned so much in her accounting career, the idea of starting her own business percolated in the back of her mind because she wanted to have decision making power, which she didn’t feel like she would have at a larger firm. She was excited about the idea of building something from the ground up. 

With the support of her husband Peter, Victoria left her job with a vision to start a business, but no clients or even a brand name. 

“I have always been like a zero or 100% [person],” she said. “I didn’t have a business plan, didn’t really have an idea of what software I was going to use, nothing. I didn’t have any clients either.”

Her firm’s name is Novii, a combination of the Latin word “novus” meaning “new” and “vision,” reflects the dynamic spirit she wanted for her firm. 

“It’s supposed to be a new, more fresh version [of accounting],” she said.

Her spirit of new vision attracts her to the biotechnology industry because the innovative spirit of that industry and the passion of the founders really speaks to her desire to modernize the accounting industry. She said she feels at home with biotechnology because of her chemical engineering background and understanding of complex scientific concepts.

“A lot of people who are founders of companies feel more comfortable when they know that they can talk to someone else that understands the science portion of it or the processes,” Victoria said.

Two years later, Novii now has over 40 clients, mostly in the biotechnology and medical technology sectors.

Victoria often finds herself the only Latina, immigrant or woman (and oftentimes all three) in a room she’s in, but she strives to inspire others in her shoes. 

“I want them to see that if I can do it, they can do it too,” she said.

Victoria’s key to success: constant networking. She has learned the importance of persisting despite the possibility of rejection.

“I have faced rejection so much that it’s almost like I have a thicker callous now, and because I know that I work with pretty cool clients that they actually say yes to working with us,” she said.