Monthly Archives: November 2023

Khushboo Kamnani

Khushboo Kamnani is currently a part of Google’s Corporate FP&A team in San Francisco, California. Prior to joining Google, Khushboo spent nearly six years at Shell and two years at Uber in various Financial Planning & Analysis (FP&A) roles. She was raised in Houston, Texas and had the opportunity to work in various cities across the US and UK. In her free time, Khushboo enjoys traveling, engaging in local philanthropic activities, and wine-tasting. 

What did you study during your time at UT? What drew you to the Canfield BHP program?

As a student, Khushboo majored in finance with a minor in accounting. She was involved in CBHP as the Make-A-Mark Social Chair and as a member of the Honors Business Student Association. Additionally, she was a part of the Undergraduate Business Council, University Securities Investment team, Financial Analyst Program, and the Longhorn Run Committee. Khushboo cherished the small class size and the bespoke curriculum which provided her with transferable skills. More importantly, she fostered relationships with her classmates that eventually turned into her close friends. 

What impactful moments led you to where you are in your career?

Khushboo started her career as part of a Finance Rotation Program at Shell in Houston, Texas. The program allowed her to try various accounting & FP&A roles which allowed her to figure out her interests. After completing her rotations, Khushboo chose to pursue a business-facing role at Shell’s downstream oil refinery in Martinez, California. She spent nearly two years working with the production engineers and business leads to manage the operating expense (Opex) portfolio for chemical usage and carbon emissions at the refinery. Khushboo really enjoyed the fast-paced environment, driving end-to-end forecasting and accounting for her business areas, and engaging in strategic conversations while pushing the business to rethink their Opex portfolio. Being in the Bay Area, Khushboo decided to make a move to the technology sector and joined the Corporate FP&A team at Uber. At Uber, Khushboo spearheaded the monthly forecasting and annual planning process across the entire company. The switch into the tech industry was a pivotal moment in Khushboo’s career as the exposure as the pace of work was significantly faster than that of the energy industry. She had to learn extremely quickly, deal with a constantly changing business landscape, and manage expectations of multiple stakeholders. Though the work was demanding, Khushboo learned several valuable lessons that she carried into her current role at Google. She hopes to progress down the FP&A path and is extremely thankful for the knowledge base that CBHP provided her. 

How did Canfield BHP prepare you for this role?

The CBHP program created a very rigorous yet collaborative environment which pushed me to think strategically and produce creative solutions for real-world business problems. Every assignment was tailored to push us to draw on each others’ strengths while presenting our best work product to our customer, the professor. All of these moments culminated into an example bank that I could draw from while going through challenging situations in my corporate role. It’s also comforting to stay connected with other CBHP alumni and professors and share my experiences with them. 

Do you have any advice for current Canfield BHP students?

Don’t let rejection stand in the way of your perseverance. If it weren’t for all those times I didn’t get the opportunities I wanted, I wouldn’t have tried harder for the future opportunities. All you can do is remain disciplined about your approach, and the right opportunity will present itself at the right time. I reached out to several of my CBHP classmates and professors when facing challenges in the corporate world. It was eye-opening to learn from their perspectives and it only pushed me to continue challenging myself. 

Anything additional you’d like to add?

A huge thanks to Shelley, CBHP professors and staff, and the CBHP Alumni Advisory Board. I am extremely grateful to be a part of this foundation.

     

Andrew and Sarah met early on during their time in the Business Honors Program at Leadership Kickoff their Freshman year. Both Sarah and Andrew come from burnt orange and accounting families and have been avid Texas fans their entire lives. The couple got married in 2021 and you can often find them hanging out with family and friends watching Texas athletics over some good Tex-Mex.

Both Sarah and Andrew majored in Business Honors and Accounting and continued onto the iMPA program to earn their Masters in Professional Accounting. Andrew also majored in Plan II Honors. Sarah stated that she was drawn to the Business Honors Program for its small classroom settings, the personal professor-student relationships, and its rigorous course-load. After some time in the program, she found that her favorite aspect of the program wass the tight-knit community that it built.

Now, Sarah and Andrew are both Senior Associates at Pricewaterhouse Coopers in Dallas, TX. Sarah works in the audit group where she serves public Consumer Service and Industrial Products clients. She works with engagement teams to perform audit procedures over companies’ internal controls over financial reporting and their financial statements to provide reasonable assurance that the financials are free from material error, as well as provide specific audit findings, to users of their financial statements. Andrew works in Capital Markets Accounting Advisory Services, which is a part of the Consulting solutions practice, specifically in the Deals platform. He provides accounting services for transactions – IPOs, acquisitions, divestitures, etc., helping both industry and private equity clients. Sarah and Andrew are also a part of the PwC UT Recruiting team!

When asked about what impactful moments led her to her career at PwC, Sarah said, “Throughout my career I have always prioritized raising my hand – to help others or take on more work, etc. At times this effort has brought an overload of work, which over time has allowed me to learn to build work/life boundaries; But often, this effort has provided me with numerous opportunities to be faced with a challenge in which I typically was unable to solve alone. These challenges taught me to use all resources I have access to, to reach out to my superiors and learn from their experiences, and to also share in the knowledge I gain from conquering these challenges.”

Separately, Andrew said that it was his class with Professor Steven Smith that convinced him to go into accounting. Furthermore, growing up he often recalled a the national championship UT won in 2005, which encouraged him to work hard in high school so he could attend UT.

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“Canfield helped me in many ways, but I would say the two biggest are giving me a great community of friends in college that helped drive me to work hard and think about my future, and secondly by putting me in numerous group work situations. The group dynamics are probably the most important thing about the jobs that business students will go in to, and there are no better teams than those of BHP students”, said Andrew when talking about the moments he felt that Canfield Business Honors most impacted his career.

Sarah and Andrew will soon be making a big move to PwC Switzerland. There, they will be partaking in a 2-year rotation with the company. They have always wanted to live and Europe and have had a shared interest in the region since they each studied abroad in Europe in 2016 (Sarah – London, Andrew – Rome). During this rotation they will continue their same work that they are currently doing as US audit/consulting resources.

We asked both Sarah and Andrew if they had any advice for current Canfield BHP students, and this is what they had to say:

Sarah: “I recommend all BHP students participate in everything the program has to offer – HBA, professor/TA office hours and events, optional courses, group study sessions, program socials, etc. The BHP faculty and community is one of the best resources I invested in while I was at UT and I am forever grateful for the knowledge, skill sets, friends and mentors it has provided with me throughout the years.”

Andrew: “Enjoy the 4 or 5 years – you don’t get it back! Join as many clubs and organizations as you can your first 2 years – those relationships you build will remain very important in your careers. Don’t worry about getting a job – you’ll get a great one.”