For 12 years, Michael Parker, an accounting alumnus from the BYU Marriott School of Business, worked contentedly in public accounting. Then he got a taste of company finances when he worked for companies like Walmart and Nike and realized he wanted to be a part of a growing, new company. “I was more of a caretaker, and I wanted to be a builder,” he says.
At that point in his life, Parker says he’d had a great career and enjoyed his roles. Still, he knew that if he didn’t get the chance to work in a startup environment and help build a company from the bottom up, he would regret it. “The skill set to build is much different than to maintain or optimize or transform,” Parker says. He wanted to develop those skills, so when a position opened at Coupang, a new company based in Korea, Parker jumped at the opportunity.
The change in career meant that Parker and his family would need to move to Korea, but this was far from the first time the Parkers had moved to be closer to work: By that point in his career, the family had bounced from Oregon to Connecticut to Nevada to Arkansas to China to Canada and back to Arkansas and back to Oregon. They packed up and settled in Seoul, where they loved the vibrant city life—though none of them spoke Korean.
Coupang employs interpreters to facilitate communication with international clients and employees like Parker. Despite navigating a language barrier, he has loved contributing to Coupang’s growth.
“When I joined, we had about $4 billion in revenue. Just a few years later we are over $30 billion in revenue, and are now a Fortune 150 company listed on the NYSE,” Parker says. “It’s almost intoxicating to be part of this founder-led startup culture, where we do things in hours and days instead of months and years. It’s just a different environment and very, very rewarding.”
After three years as the chief accounting officer at Coupang, Parker transitioned to his current role as head of investor relations. The investors he meets with are almost entirely based in Europe and the US, so he moved his family back to the US. Parker still spends about a third of his time in Korea, he says, and when he is home, he works an unconventional schedule during the day and throughout the night to account for the multiple time zones.
To Parker, the excitement he feels for his job is well worth the odd hours and constant travel. “It’d be hard to go back to any of the other jobs I’ve had,” he says. “I’d miss the adrenaline that comes with this position and the amount of learning and growth that happens in such a concentrated period of time here.”
Parker enjoys learning new skills, both inside and outside of his career. He and his son are currently working together to restore an old car, and over the years he has built a variety of structures on family property. He describes it as a way for him to connect with his children while also learning a skill and building something new.
“It’s satisfying to learn how to do something and then sit back after the fact and enjoy this thing that you built,” Parker says. “Whether it be a career or something that my kids and I have built together, it’s an equal sense of gratitude and reward that gives me more confidence to go and take on the next challenge.”
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Written by Melissa Een
