UMSL alumni Yarely Zamacona and Nick Coco attended the Accounting Club’s Launch Your Career event to dispense advice and answer questions as associates at Abeles and Hoffman. (Photos by Derik Hoffmann)

Yarely Zamacona was excited for last week’s career-building event sponsored by the Accounting Club where University of Missouri–St. Louis students have the opportunity to meet with local accounting firms in a more casual, conversational setting.

For Zamacona, a tax associate with Abeles and Hoffman, it was very much a full-circle moment. She attended the event last year, too, but as a student at UMSL looking to make connections to help her career. This year, she was back as a success story, a shining example of why events like this are such an important part of the student-focused mission of UMSL’s Department of Accounting.

“I came to this event last year, and I met with the firm, met with Nick [Coco], who is at the table with me today,” Zamacona said. “After meeting him at this event last year, we connected and then I started working for the firm on a spring internship, doing tax. They hired me full-time in June of this year after my internship.”

Zamacona was one of 11 UMSL alumni among representatives from 13 public accounting firms – Abeles and Hoffman, Anders, Armanino, BDO, CLA, Deloitte, Forvis Mazars, PwC, RubinBrown, SWF, Sikich, UHY and WIPFLI – at this year’s “Launch Your Career” event. Highlighting the alumni in attendance was part of the new Alumni on Campus initiative that the Office of Alumni Engagement has started in an effort to recognize the impacts made by alumni and help other graduates understand how they can help.

Like all of the other alumni and professionals at the packed event in Anheuser-Busch Hall, Zamacona was more than happy to answer questions and dispense advice.

Marcia Countryman, the faculty advisor for the club, said 54 students attended the event. Each firm had a table and every 10 minutes, the students rotated to a new table to meet with a new firm. Casual attire was encouraged, and students asked questions about anything they wanted: what it’s like working at each company, internship opportunities, part-time jobs, what classes helped prepare them for their career or what firms expect them to know in advance.

“It’s very eye-opening now from this perspective, because I know how these students feel,” said Zamacona, who finished her bachelor’s degree in May and is pursuing her graduate degree as part of the Accelerated Master’s program. “Coming in, it’s very nerve-wracking, talking to these firms and putting yourself out there. It takes a lot of courage just to network and communicate with those professionals. I feel like I can help with that, being an UMSL alum who recently graduated, telling students that I’m currently in their master’s program, still going to school while I’m with the firm. I’m telling them that it’s doable, that UMSL has a great program, telling them about that balance of being able to go to school and go to work.”

The Accounting Club’s Launch Your Career event was held on Tuesday, and the next day UMSL’s chapter of Beta Alpha Psi held its annual Accountants’ Networking Night, which is more of a traditional career fair environment where students arrive in professional attire and present their resumes to the accounting professionals in attendance. Along with alumni representing a variety of firms, both the Missouri Society of Certified Public Accountants and Becker CPA Review had representatives at the event.

“Beta Alpha Psi members also benefit from having their resumes included in a resume book that is distributed directly to employers,” said Johnna Murray, the faculty advisor for Beta Alpha Psi. “The resume book gives students added visibility and ensures that their qualifications reach professionals even beyond those they meet in person at the event.”

Both events showcase the accounting department’s efforts to connect students with firms.

“There is a longstanding history of offers being extended for internships and even jobs within a week or two of these events,” said Steve Moehrle, a professor of accounting at UMSL who was recently appointed a Curators’ Distinguished Professor by the University of Missouri Board of Curators.

Moehrle showed up at the event to lend his support, as did Michele Meckfessel, the department chair. Their attendance is evidence of the department’s focus on these types of events. The same can be said for the alumni who participated, said Accounting Club President Grant Ebert.

“Having so many alumni here really goes to show that UMSL is a leading university for accounting degrees in Missouri,” Ebert said. “And when you see a lot of alumni come back, that tells me they enjoyed their experience here, and they want to come back and give that same experience to students who are enrolled now.”

That definitely was the case for Zamacona.

“They were trying to get the recruiting team together, and they asked me, ‘Hey, do you want to go back to UMSL and help Nick with the recruiting? It’ll be a really great event,’” she said. “And I was like, ‘Yes, of course!’ It was a very full-circle moment, to be here last year as a student and to be here now with the firm.”

Zamacona was eager to show students they can follow her path, even if it wasn’t necessarily the exact path she had in mind when she started at UMSL.

“The plan was always to go into my master’s, though the plan was not to start working full time until after the master’s,” she said with a laugh. “But given that opportunity to come back to the firm full-time, after I enjoyed my internship, the firm, the culture, the people, I really wanted to come back. I couldn’t turn it down.”