McCombs Alumni Network News

Amidst challenging times, not all companies have found themselves struggling in the current marketplace. Bonnie Chan, MPA ’94, is a Director of Finance at Sara Lee and says business is good in the North American retail segment. “Our products are doing well this year especially when consumers are looking for value-added solutions to their meals experience and we continue to offer new products that meet consumer needs,” said Chan in relation to current retail sales.

Chan attributes her climb to the director of finance for a business unit showcasing national brands of Hillshire Farm and Ball Park to her experience at the McCombs School. She says the balance between theory and practice, teamwork, and group projects prepared her well for real life. One student project that she recalls was an internal audit on the printing unit at UT Austin. “It was a great experience because it was then I began to pull all of my learning together. Not only were we depending on what we had learned from our internal audit course, but we also found ourselves using activity-based costing from managerial accounting,” said Chan.

She found herself a world away when she decided to attend the McCombs School of Business. Chan graduated from The Chinese University of Hong Kong in 1993 with a Bachelor of Business Administration and soon departed for Texas. After graduation she went on to work for the City of Austin in performance auditing, reviewing the operations of each individual department. Chan was also a part of the audit team over the construction of the Austin-Bergstrom International Airport. She found the role rewarding because it provided accountability to taxpayers and ensured the effectiveness and efficiency of government spending.

Chan went on to the Internal Audit Department at Gateway Computers in South Dakota. The weather was in stark contrast to her years spent in Texas and Chan decided she needed to go somewhere warmer. Chan took a position with Dean Foods including an expatriate assignment in England as accounting manager and today finds herself at Sara Lee. Throughout her career she has found that her MPA from the McCombs School has been viewed highly and has opened many doors for her. Chan is grateful for the learning she was able to take with her. She keeps in touch regularly with those professors who made an impact on her life and looks for ways to giving back to the McCombs School.

Chan is a CPA, CIA and CISA. She has also earned an MBA from the Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University. She and her husband, Philip Sammarco, live in the Chicago suburb.