Our Team
Zitai (Ted) Liang is a Chartered Accountant and a member of Chartered Accountants Australia and New Zealand (CA ANZ), with a Bachelor of Accounting from Massey University. He is Tax Manager at Optimal Accountants.
Ted has many years of accounting experience, at a mid-tier New Zealand accounting firm and in accounting roles inside operating businesses. That gives him both views: how accounts and tax returns must be prepared, and how a business actually runs day to day.
Ted looks after tax, annual accounts and business advisory work, with an emphasis on clear, practical advice.
Emily Yao is an ACCA-qualified accountant and a graduate of Massey University, New Zealand. Emily brings many years of practical accounting experience to Optimal Accountants, spanning annual financial statements, GST and income tax returns, and the year-round bookkeeping that sits behind them.
Emily's real strength is the part of accounting that isn't the numbers — listening first, asking the questions that matter, and explaining what the figures mean in plain language, with no jargon and no assumptions about what a client already knows. Clients finish a conversation with Emily knowing exactly where they stand and what happens next.
That combination of technical depth and genuine approachability makes Emily a trusted first point of contact for the business owners and property investors we look after.
Kevin Li is a graduate of the University of Auckland and brings many years of accounting experience to Optimal Accountants, with particular depth in three areas our clients ask about constantly: property and real estate, hospitality, and import and export trade.
Those are industries where the questions rarely arrive neatly packaged — a property deal with an awkward settlement date, a restaurant balancing cash flow against wages, an importer waiting on a shipment. Kevin is at his best in exactly that territory: working out what actually happened, setting out the options in plain terms, and recommending the one that leaves the client best placed.
That mix of sector knowledge and practical problem-solving makes Kevin the person we turn to when a client's situation doesn't have an obvious answer.
