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Steve Vaughan

Chief Financial Officer
Sonic Corp.
Oklahoma City, OK

 

Steve Vaughan tried not to go to college.

After attending the University of Oklahoma for one year, he left, thinking he could start making money doing something else. But Steve quickly found it wasn’t so easy to hit the big time without a degree. He went back to school with renewed determination and got his degree in accounting, which he chose for its high hiring rate.

After college, Steve worked at Ernst & Young while getting ready for the CPA exam. He then took his skills and his appetite to Sonic Corp., the company behind Sonic Drive-Ins. Steve has been in Sonic’s finance department for 19 years, working his way up from internal auditor to Chief Financial Officer.

Steve loves that “no two days are the same.” A typical day (which is “extremely busy”) involves working with the rest of the finance department, taking care of all the money-related questions that pop up in a big business. While the work is constant, Steve still gets home in time for dinner with his family. And being the CFO of a million-dollar company doesn’t stop him from serving on the board of the Oklahoma Future Farmers of America Foundation, playing with his three dogs and listening to rap music with his daughter.

If you’re considering a career in business, Steve says you can’t lose with a CPA license. “The CPA certification provides you with a lot of flexibility and the ability to go down several career paths,” he says. “At Sonic, not only are several employees in our financial group CPAs, but the President of the company is a CPA and our VP of Supply Chain Management is a CPA.”

College sounds pretty good now, doesn’t it?

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