The MPA Distinguished Speaker Lyceum is one of the most important traditions in the MPA program. Last Tuesday we hosted Ms. Camille Stovall, a partner at Deloitte and the Chief Operating Officer of Deloitte Financial Advisory Services (FAS). The conversational interview between Ms. Stovall, Professor Steve Limberg, and my fellow MPA students ranged from how to approach difficult restructurings to the importance of analytics. The latter prompted Prof. Limberg to ask just how analytics are used in the real world.
Ms. Cook started off describing what MyYearbook was all about. When I hear about social media sites, I assume they are destined to fail since they are competing with the powerful network effects of Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. But Catherine Cook explained how these three social media giants don’t cover the entire span of the social media market. Facebook is for people you already know, Twitter is primarily used for news and entertainment feed, and LinkedIn is for the professional sphere of social media.
None of these sites are for meeting new people. That is the goal of MyYearbook. Cat Cook told us she got the idea at 15 when she moved to a new high school and didn’t know anybody. One of the purposes of the site is to help people who move to a new city engage with new people within a certain mile radius of them. Continue reading MPA Council Hosts Catherine Cook, Founder of MyYearbook→
Last week, a group of MPA students, myself included, who are recruiting with one of the Big 4, had the opportunity to participate in an activity co-sponsored by TOMS shoes. For those of you who may not know the story behind TOMS, essentially they donate one pair of shoes to someone in need everytime a pair is purchased.
At the recruiting event, the donations were two-fold. First, because of the buy one-give one strategy at TOMS, one pair of shoes was donated to someone in need for every student attending the event. Second, we also donated our decorated TOMS to a local Austin charity.
The community service aspect of public accounting certainly increases my desire to work in the industry. All of the Big 4 have multiple ways of helping to serve and improve the community. Midcaps and regional firms definitely participate in community service as well- I am just focusing on the Big 4 for the sake of this blog.
Here are some of my favorite community service efforts by the Big 4:
Deloitte’s big community service event is called IMPACT day. On IMPACT day, Deloitte professionals across the country all set aside their work and work for a nonprofit in their community. Just to put this in perspective, there are OVER 50,000 Deloitte employees nationwide and almost all of them will participate in this special day- that’s a lot of community service!
Here at McCombs, we’re in the home stretch of the Spring semester, preparing ourselves for that one. last. exam (per course) before summer. Sigh, time passes so quickly.
Some Updates: Work at Greenlights is going well. I have been doing quite a bit of data analytics using Excel (putting those concepts I learned in our Information Technology in Accounting class to work). I just completed a project that involved performing calculations of retention rates and general stats using our donor database. Now, I’m transitioning into a very (but not so) different project – grant writing! Also, next week I’m going to be attending a Board Essentials workshop, run by Greenlights, where I will be learning about the basics of putting together a strong nonprofit board and possible opportunities for me to be involved when I start working full-time at an accounting firm. CPAs are actually a real (desirable!) asset to any nonprofit board.
My internal audit team recently wrapped up a project with the City of Austin (Office of the City Auditor), where we performed a follow-up audit of the Controller’s Office regarding their hotel occupancy tax collection process in regards to Short Term Rental (think HomeAway and AirBnB). A report on that audit is now available to the public here. During the length of the project, my team communicated with the City Auditors as well as accountants at the Controller’s Office, interviewed Short Term Rental Owners, and got a first hand account of the hotel occupancy tax collection process. We wrote engagement letters and work papers and came up with a final deliverable report. Much was learned, I should say.
Ah, on the side, I’ve recently taken on the role of being an assistant editor at a literary journal and have been interviewing authors about their writing (authors that fall into the science-fiction and fantasy genre). Last night, I had a wonderful conversation with a sci-fi writer about her concept of “the alien.” And, while I’m being tangential, today in the parking lot of the Korean grocery store, I found a patch of mimosa ferns! I used to live in Hawaii and haven’t seen mimosa ferns since those days.
As for school work: What are we doing in this last stretch to motivate ourselves, you ask? Well, group study is at an all-time high! Otherwise, we find ways to enjoy our diminishing time here in Austin. The weather is temperate – Barton Springs is thriving again. We gather together to watch Game of Thrones on Sunday evenings and eat cupcakes with cadbury egg centers.
Greetings from Spring Break 2012! I know many of my fellow MPA’s were on vacations much more exciting and exotic than mine, but I thought I would share my experience anyways.
I spent my first weekend home for Spring Break not lounging out in the Texas sun, but in a below freezing ice rink judging a local figure skating competition. For those of you who don’t know, I am a US figure skating judge and help judge at a handful of competitions each year. This particular competition I judged at was Showskate 2012 and was different than most figure skating competitions because the skaters are allowed to skate to music with lyrics and use props to help them interpret the music. The competition is great fun for everyone involved, and is very entertaining, thanks to the crazy routines skaters performed.
I love judging because I was a competitive figure skater for 12 years, and judging allows me to stay involved with the sport. I am a huge figure skating fan. Continue reading Can Spring Break Last All Year?→
