Thomas Fabry is interning at RubinBrown while studying for his CPA exam. He’ll start his full-time job at RubinBrown in October. (Photo by Derik Holtmann)
During his time as a student at the University of Missouri–St. Louis, Thomas Fabry made an indelible impact on the accounting department. In the effusive words of Associate Teaching Professor Marcia Countryman – Fabry was both a supplemental instructor and teaching assistant for Countryman – he was a “shining star” and “Accounting Club legend.”
Fabry earned two accounting degrees from UMSL; he finished his bachelor’s with a minor in information systems in the fall of 2023 after transferring to UMSL from St. Louis Community College–Meramec for the 2021 spring semester, and he graduated with his master’s with a focus in taxation this past December. He’s doing his third internship at RubinBrown this month as he studies for the Certified Public Accountant exam, and he’ll start full time at RubinBrown in October.
“Thomas is a wonderful example of what makes the UMSL student experience so special: caring people who want to help others succeed,” said Countryman, who has been the faculty advisor for the Accounting Club for a decade. “I’ll miss his generosity and unwavering support.”
No doubt, Fabry’s legacy in the accounting department will be a lasting one. Odd as it might sound, though, his time at UMSL and his future job at a prestigious accounting firm – RubinBrown has more CPAs than any other firm in St. Louis – can be very clearly traced back to a specific T-shirt hanging in his closet. Had he folded this particular shirt up and stuffed it away at the bottom of a drawer, his life journey could have been much different.
During his senior year at Fox High School in Arnold, Fabry took an accounting class taught by Corey Krutzsch. At the time, he wasn’t thinking about accounting as a potential career path, but the accounting basics and principles Krutzsch presented made sense to him. One of the highlights of Krutzsch’s class was the Accounting Survivor game, a semester-long activity.
“Every week we had a test that was, essentially, like the trial mini games they have on the show Survivor,” Fabry said. “If you got anything wrong, you were eliminated. I lasted through the whole semester, and then there was a vote at the end, and people ended up voting for me.”
In addition to the prestige of winning the event, Fabry won a free T-Shirt that read “I survived Krutzsch’s Accounting Survivor!” with the show’s Outwit, Outlast, Outplay logo in the middle. For years, the shirt was just a fun reminder of an enjoyable high school class. Fabry took one semester of community college after graduating from Fox in 2014 but, unsure what career path he wanted to take, he started grinding in the real world. He took a job at Fazoli’s and worked his way up to manager, then did the same progression at a movie theatre.
Wanting to focus his career efforts, he started taking classes at STLCC–Meramec in the fall of 2017. It didn’t take long for him to figure out that his initial choice of computer science was not for him, though, and he spent the rest of the semester trying to figure out his next step.
Enter the T-shirt, with its muted yellow hue that stood out in a closet without similar colors.
“I was thinking back to what I excelled at in high school, and whenever I would just be getting ready, I would see that shirt,” Fabry said. “And one day it kind of hit me: ‘Maybe accounting is something that I’m interested in. Let me try this instead.’ So the semester after I tried coding and didn’t like it, I went into accounting, and it just clicked. It was something that I could intuitively think my way through.”
Fabry loved his accounting classes so much that he took an internship – found via a Facebook friend – in the spring of 2018 even though he knew he’d probably be in over his head. Turns out, PMA Holdings was a perfect spot for him, and Meggan Toombs was an ideal boss.
“She understood what it was like to be starting in accounting and to not have all of the know-how of how to do it in real life,” Fabry said. “She said, ‘We’re going to teach you everything you need to know. Welcome aboard!’ So very early on in my college career, I started an internship in accounting.”
Fabry continued to work part-time at PMA Holdings until 2021 as he took classes at STLCC–Meramec. When he transferred to UMSL as a junior in the spring of 2021, his Financial Accounting and Reporting I class that first semester opened his eyes.
“It was the first time where the accounting wasn’t just intuitive,” Fabry said. “You really have to hammer down journal entries. You have to learn how the accounts and the statements work together, and getting through that class taught me that I was capable of it. I definitely struggled a little bit. Going from a community college with lower-level accounting classes to UMSL, it was a lot more challenging.”
The challenge was equal parts invigorating and affirming. Even though he lived in Arnold and commuted the 45 minutes to UMSL’s campus his entire time as a student, he also was determined to become part of the accounting community, and that started with the Accounting Club.
“That was really where I started to see my campus life blossom,” Fabry said. “One day after class, someone I was friendly with said, ‘I’m going to go to this Accounting Club event. I think it’ll be fun.’ So I was like, ‘Let me go with you. We’ll have fun.’ They immediately welcomed me in. I could tell everyone was nice, and they wanted to make it a fun experience. The Accounting Club was a great way to find those people who want to make college enjoyable.”
Countryman said one of her favorite memories as the club’s faculty advisor is recruiting Fabry to become the Accounting Club marketing director in April 2022 and watching him grow into the role and positively impact students by sharing the opportunity to get involved with the club.
“Bouncing back after COVID has been tough for many students,” she said. “His efforts to reach out to UMSL students, helping to build a warm, rewarding experience at Accounting Club events, made a positive impact on student lives. He brought strong leadership skills and commitment to our Accounting Club mission of encouraging relationships among students and professionals and fostering successful careers and lifelong learning. Thomas is a ray of sunshine with his warm smile and generous spirit.”
And personally, being so involved helped Fabry ease into professional networking, which was something he was a bit apprehensive about. At one of the meet-the-firms events where the Accounting Club brings local companies to campus to network and meet with students, Fabry had a productive conversation with the representatives from RubinBrown.
“The clubs, not just the Accounting Club but Beta Alpha Psi as well, they do a great job in bridging that gap and getting students ready to go out into the workforce and show them what they need to do,” Fabry said. “I definitely would not be nearly as successful if I didn’t lean into the Accounting Club. I got that first internship from going to an Accounting Club event and meeting campus recruiters.”
His first internship at RubinBrown led to two more; all three have been in tax services.
“I am in real estate tax, and I deal a lot with the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit,” he said. “It’s kind of cool because we’re setting up all of these real estate projects that can help the community. It’s a weird mix of morality and accounting that I didn’t think I would see, but I’ve done things with real estate tax in my internships, and I’ve helped a lot with partnerships.”
He’s excited to start full-time at RubinBrown in October, though he knows finishing the final three parts of the CPA exam – he’s completed the first section – will be yet another challenge.
“For first part, I studied for about 140 hours,” he said. “It was a huge journey. I remember the last day that I studied, I clicked off of it, and I took the deepest breath. Then I said, ‘Am I even ready for the test? I’m not sure.’”
Turns out, he was ready.
Just like he was during his high school Accounting Survivor challenge.
