Aireka Castaneda-Mendoza.

Aireka was born in Morenci, Arizona — a copper-mining town carved into the eastern edge of the state — and raised an hour down the road in Safford, where she graduated with honors from Safford High School in 1993. She knew accounting was her craft by high school: a member of Future Business Leaders of America, she competed at the FBLA Business Finals in both Typing and Data Entry, earned three consecutive years in the National Honor Society, and served as Student Council Treasurer in '92 — the first signs of a mind built for ledgers and leadership.

Growing up in Arizona mining communities taught Aireka the value of hard work, integrity, and keeping your word. Those lessons — passed down from family and the small-town fabric of Graham County — continue to guide how she serves clients today.

In a high-school career plan, she wrote down a single goal: become a controller within ten years. It would ultimately take twenty — a longer road than she planned, but one that built a depth of experience no shortcut could have produced.

From Safford she moved on to Eastern Arizona College, where she played softball for two years — still her favorite sport — and pursued liberal studies with an early focus on Criminal Law. When she transferred to Pima Community Collegein Tucson, that direction unraveled fast. A professor pulled her aside and gently told her criminal law wasn't her fit. She agreed — and pivoted to the discipline she'd been quietly built for all along: accounting.

"I love numbers and the challenge they give me from time to time; however, they also have the ability to tell a narrative on how well a company is doing."

"Numbers can tell the history of a company — and give a glimpse into its future."

That move to Tucson twenty-nine years ago became the launching point for a career that would carry her from administrative roles into the high-discipline world of Earned Value Management.

At Raytheon Missile Systems, Aireka spent six years inside the JSOW program as a Finance Associate and Analyst, working in SAP, MPM, IPM, RIVR, and RAFT — preparing cost-schedule review slides, managing actuals, and learning the kind of financial rigor that Fortune 500 controllers live by. She later completed her Bachelor of Arts in Business Management with a concentration in Accounting from AIU Online.

In 2015, Aireka brought that discipline into the trenches of Arizona construction at Mirage Plastering, Inc.What started as a four-week temporary assignment as Accounts Payable Manager turned into an 8.5-year career. She cleaned up Accounts Payable, Inventory, and Fixed Assets, supported month-end and year-end close, owned reconciliations across the board — and was promoted to Assistant Controller.

In October 2019, she was asked to step into Project Controls / Project Manager for the Tucson department, where she brought project after project to completion early and under budget, running earned-value analysis, change management, monthly client invoicing, and financial governance from blueprint to closeout. The high-school goal — controller — was finally complete, twenty years after she wrote it down.

Why she launched ACM: after years inside the books of Arizona businesses, Aireka kept seeing the same pattern — owners weren't getting clear numbers, and the stories their books should have been telling were buried under data entered incorrectly or riddled with errors. Half the time, jobs were going upside down before anyone could see it coming. ACM Bookkeeping & Business Services LLC exists to fix that: giving Arizona small and mid-sized business owners the same caliber of financial leadership a Fortune 500 controller delivers — built on clean data, accurate entries, and numbers owners can actually trust.

When she's not in the books, you'll find Aireka on a trail, in the gym, or spending time with family and close friends — the people and the desert that have kept her grounded for twenty-nine years in Tucson.