37: Belicia Cespedes serves an ace for coworker connections

Belicia Cespedes loves tennis. She also happens to be the youngest person to ever pass the CPA Exam (at age 17). Professionalism would tell her that the latter is most important for her career but she has found a great deal of success creating coworker connections through tennis, even teaching some of her PwC co-workers how to play. And her competitive side comes out during the table tennis tournaments (very similar, I mean it's got "tennis" in the name!) the audit team had during Busy Season. What's most impressive is all of this is from an intern – the first intern that has been a guest on the show! In this episode we talk about how playing tennis translates directly to her role as a forensics auditor. Each person is ultimately responsible for their own performance but you can always turn to the rest of the team for support. We also talk about how much professionalism weighs on interns and new hires as they feel the pressure to impress at work, not realizing that sharing your hobbies or passions actually helps more than hurts your career. Belicia is currently working as a Risk Assurance Intern with the Forensics Team at PwC. She is attending CSUN and pursuing her MSA.