NHBC x CPA Takeaways

Hi everyone! My name is Bethel Seyoum and I’m a sophomore at Albert Campbell Collegiate Institute. This weekend, I had the amazing opportunity to participate in the National High School Business Conference. The event was an overview of the foundations of accounting, navigating your career path, and skills fundamentals.

The keynote was hosted by forensic accountant Mark Grennon within the first half of the conference. As he highlighted aspects of his career, he recounted his journey of navigating his passions to finally put a label on what he wanted to do for the rest of his life. He also described the measures and procedures involved in working closely with the government to identify criminals and suspicious activity. Additionally, his descriptions of his roles as an accountant allowed me to investigate one of the careers I’d wanted to pursue in the future, and prompted me to consider the factors that play into discovering your career path.

In the first workshop, participants were given the opportunity to review skills development, extracurricular opportunities, accountant roles and job prospects with CPA. I learned a lot about how to invest in enhancing these skills and developing a plan to navigate future career goals and prospects. The second workshop provided students with tips to emerge from high school with coping strategies to manage stress and identified how we gravitate to specific ideals, goals, and maintain certain attitudes depending on our personality type.

When the time came for the case, I was excited to apply my learning from the beginning of the conference. When it arrived in an email, our team was keen to explore the different factors and circumstances that played into forensics and finance alongside developing our presentation skills.

Overall, I am extremely grateful to have the opportunity to attend this conference. I’d recommend these conferences to anyone looking to explore the world of business.