YEOC Accounting Session: Strength in Integrity

This blog post was written by Foster Student and YEOC Mentor Mike Guevarra

“Integrity Above All” is the first of three core values here at the Foster Business School. For YEOC’s April session centered around the business theme of accounting, YEOC mentees gained a look into the role auditing has in the world to keep organizations responsible and uphold integrity in the business world. YEOC mentors Paolo and Safira led a dynamic mentor workshop on valuable accounting principles such as the audit process, report types, and the fraud triangle. They also peppered in popular culture into the workshop, such as a clip from the movie The Accountant. Despite the subject usually being perceived as dry, Paolo and Safira effectively communicated the value of understanding it, especially with the afternoon activity they created for the mentee teams!

Students diligently take notes during the Mentor lecture on accounting led by Paolo and Safira.

Mentees loudly compete to answer questions during the trivia portion of the accounting activity.

In a series of challenges, the students solved several problems that interactively applied the accounting concepts taught in the mentor workshop during the accounting activity. For over an hour, mentee teams spread out across the entire business school as they attempted to answer riddles and complete tasks to earn the most points. Eventually, all the teams converged to Shansby auditorium, where mentees buzzed in answers to accounting trivia. The speed and enthusiasm that the mentees had in showing their accounting skills was impressive!

EY professionals Allen Cho (a Foster graduate) and Keith Acfalle (a Foster graduate and YEOC Mentor last year) also led a valuable presentation on financial literacy, imparting the importance of creating personal finance goals and then responsibly sticking to them. Throughout their talk that touched on topics such as budgeting and credit cards the two were interactive in the classroom, tossing candy and sharing amusing personal stories to engage the students. During Q & A, Allen shared the time he had his card declined while buying milk and cereal from QFC and decided to forego the milk: “You don’t want to ever be at the front of the line in the grocery store with the No Milk Face,” he joked.

Professional Speaker Allen Cho gets the students warmed up with an icebreaker for the Financial Literacy workshop.

In his keynote talk, Ryan Kist shares his story to students with passion and comedy.

As the keynote speaker, Ryan Kist (who is EY’s Inclusiveness Campus Recruiting Leader) flew in from North Carolina to give a captivating speech about the power to craft your own narrative and beliefs. In it, he offered poignant advice that especially applied to the senior students hearing back from universities they applied to. During Ryan’s talk, he had the students close their eyes to visualize standing at a cliff with success on the other side: “If I told you there was a bridge in front of you, would you take that first step?” He followed up, stating two important takeaways: “First, the bridge to success is very rarely one you can see. It’s about faith and trust that you will get there. Second, is that everyone is also standing at the edge of their own cliffs as well. Those who take that first step, invariably get to that pot of gold. Those who keep standing at the edge of the cliff will always remain at the starting point.”

YEOC mentees, parents, and mentors enjoy a dinner together to celebrate their offer of admittance to UW.

After the YEOC day concluded, a special celebration was held for newly UW-admitted senior mentees. During the dinner, students heard from Alumni, current students, and the Undergraduate Diversity Services (UDS) team about the community and support in place at Foster to help serve them throughout college. Not only was this an occasion to both sway them towards attending UW, but to recognize their huge accomplishment with their parents and YEOC mentors. As a mentor myself, it was a proud experience to sit down with my mentees and their families to talk through their excitement as incoming first-year students to UW. I look forward to when I can be with them on campus not as mentees, but as peers.

A very big thank you to our guest speakers and workshop presenters for helping make this YEOC session a success!

YEOC Mentee applications are now open. Apply to YEOC here for the 2018-19 school year by May 31, 2018.