I spent over a decade working in the service industry, beginning at a small restaurant on South Padre Island as a waiter and ending as a manager at the best pizza place in Austin. I began my college career at the tail end of my time in the customer-facing service industry and was fortunate to land a job with MML Hospitality as a Staff Accountant while pursuing my degree in Accounting at Austin Community College and Texas State University. In May of 2022 I graduated with a Bachelor of Business Administration, majoring in Accounting from Texas State and was honored with magna cum laude distinction.It was during my time at MML that I learned the accounting ropes by performing day-to-day accounting activities, including: accounts payable, daily comps and sales, bank and credit card reconciliations, and inter-company journal entries (including staff payroll accrual), as well as mentoring and training two new Accounting Clerks. By the end of my tenure at McGuire Moorman Lambert Hospitality, I was responsible for the accounting of up to 10 restaurants, the in-house design firm Lambert McGuire Design, and the management company itself. Currently employed by The HFW Companies as a Regional Finance Manager, I have been directly involved with the implementation of a new ERP system at two of our partner firms, as well as handling a majority of their financial tasks. I report to the VP of Finance and am responsible for presenting the firms’ financials monthly, assimilating and evaluating the various financial statements to provide an analysis of the company’s performance.