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Jeannette Koger

Senior Technical Manager
AICPA (that's us)
Durham, NC

 

When she entered college, Jeannette Koger knew she wanted to become a Mechanical Engineer.

But after spending two years going in that direction, Jeannette realized it wasn’t the right fit for her. “I redirected my course work to focus on the accounting path,” she says.

Jeannette graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in Accounting and decided to sit for the CPA exam. “Although I took and passed all four parts of the CPA exam after graduation, I decided to take a few months off to backpack around Europe before beginning my job search,” she says.

Once she returned to the States, Jeannette landed her first job at Sprint Telecom working in internal audit. “At Sprint I worked on both financial and process audits and ultimately found myself in Europe working on a joint venture with Deutsch Telecom and France Telecom,” she says. “While in Europe, I decided to pursue my Master’s and left the workforce for two years to attend the MBA program at Cornell University.”

After earning her Master’s degree, she went to work for a Big 4 firm in strategic consulting before joining the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants. “In my role at the AICPA, I'm responsible for working with CPAs that focus in Forensic Accounting, Valuation Services, Information Technology and Financial Planning,” Jeannette says. “Our goal is to provide products and services that CPA can use to better serve their clients in these specialized areas.”

Jeannette says her favorite part of being a CPA is “creating products and services that help make CPAs successful.” But she adds that “accounting provides the flexibility to follow any career path in any industry.”

So it sounds like Jeannette is glad she made the switch from engineering to accounting. “As an accountant, your skills are always in demand,” she says.

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