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Nisa Agrawal

Audit Senior Associate
PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC)
Chicago, IL

 

Anything but bookkeeping.

That’s what Nisa Agrawal thought after taking an accounting course in high school. “All we did were bookkeeping entries, and after that I was sure that my personality wasn’t suited to accounting,” she says.

But when she went to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, a professor opened her eyes to the possibilities. “He helped me connect accounting to current events –I even helped him prepare class quizzes based on news items– and I realized there was a lot more to accounting,” Nisa says.

Nisa graduated in May 2008 and passed the CPA exam later that summer. She got a job at PricewaterhouseCoopers, one of the world’s largest accounting firms. “I’m hardly ever in the office,” she says. As an auditor continuing with PwC, Nisa primarily works from client locations, which gives her an opportunity to work closely with her teammates and client contacts in person. This face-to-face interaction allows Nisa to develop stronger relationships with the people at work.

“If you want a career that’s stable, but at the same time is constantly changing, becoming a CPA is the way to go,” Nisa says. “In high school I had no idea all the different directions I could take with an accounting degree.”

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