Nov. 19, 2014

By Rumasa Noor

Sixteen students from UW-Whitewater’s chapter of Institute of Management Accountants (IMA) took a three-day road trip to IMA’s 15th Annual Student Leadership Conference. It was held in Indianapolis, Indiana between November 6 and 8.

The purpose of the conference was to familiarize students with accounting professionals in the real world.

UW-W professor and IMA advisor, Linda Amann, accompanied the students on this trip. The conference featured highly accomplished accounting professionals including Sarah Fisher, race car driver and CEO of Sarah Fisher Hartman Racing; Jeffrey Jardine, vice president of finance at Focal Point Homes and Karen Battin, vice president and controller at Cummins, Inc.

The conference began with a networking session, followed by presentations from different speakers the next day. The topics included resume tips, data analytics, critical thinking, ethical leadership and more.

Kari Richard, junior and president of IMA, said she learned a great deal by listening to the speakers and their stories.

“I think all of our members got amazing connections into businesses across the US,” Richard said. “When we network in Whitewater, it’s usually the companies in Wisconsin, so it was really nice to have a national coverage of different companies that you can work for possibly from all over the world.”

Amann said the conference is useful for the students because they won’t have a chance to meet and network with these professionals otherwise.

“Students can use it [conference] in a couple of different ways; they can use it to work on their networking skills; small talk, introducing themselves to the speaker, going up and shaking hands, they also can use it to meet students from other campuses,” Amann said.

Richard became a member of IMA last fall, when she was a freshman. She decided to run for President in May and was elected for this fall. She studied abroad in Mexico over the summer, where she completed her sophomore year.

Richard said she made connections with the IMA members from University of Texas, where she will be moving in two years.

“I got to make connections in the state that I will be relocating to and that’s really cool that I already have a place to go down there they can refer me to companies,” Richard said.

She will be the first student from UW-W to finish her bachelor’s in Accounting in two and a half years and her master’s in accounting in three.