b'From Classroom to Fortune 500 CompanyUpon graduating from Valdosta State University I began my professional journey in finance at Cummins Inc., a Fortune 500 company mostly known for their diesel engines and power generators. (Sherita Gregory first met Cummins Inc. while participating in Institute of Management Accountants activities at VSU.)My first role was as a participant in the companys Finance Development Program, a two-year program that provides financial and accounting professionals a broad range of experience in planning, forecasting, reporting, financial analysis, audit, plant finance, transaction support,opportunity to help recruit for the company, mentor and treasury.interns, represent the company at races (monster truck racing, drag racing, etc.), travel internationally, and co-Throughout the program I rotated through four rolesfound my regions first employee resource group. within finance and accountingplant and operations; general accounting; planning, forecasting, and reporting;Working at Cummins was great, but as we know all good and internal audit / SOX. My experiences spanned fromthings must come to an end. I eventually resigned from leading cross functional projects and building globalCummins and joined Johnson & Johnson in New Jersey. budgets to developing financial models, being the subjectIn this new, unique role, I had an opportunity to help lead matter expert in audits, facilitating process improvement,divesting the companys diabetes business by owning the and a slew of other things. balance sheet and profit and loss. I was able to clean up the divestiture, work through negotiations, develop a new The program challenged me in areas beyond finance.warranty model, and automate processes to the point For instance, once a quarter for two years I presentedwhere leadership was supportive of me passing the role my work and projects to the chief financial officer andonto the acquisitions and divestitures team. After that a large panel of our finance leadership team. This gaveI went into the role that I hold todaya newly created me an opportunity to manage questions and criticalrole where I have been building up financial reporting, feedback, which forever improved my presentation skillsprocesses, budgets, etc. in order to support supply chain and financial framing abilities. One of my memorabledepartments across the Vision Franchise, which includes experiences was stripping down an engine to its blockVision Care (Acuvue contact brands) and Surgical Vision and building it all the way back up with a team of people.(LASIK, cataract, and glaucoma eye surgeries). Keeping We never turned the engine on to see if it worked, but Itrue to myself I have dabbled in my passion of developing am very confident that it would have.others by joining a development focus group. This year, with the support of the team, I launched a global mentor The program exposed me to various roles and ultimatelyprogram and have been excited with the programs results helped me find my nicheplanning, forecasting, andthus far. reporting (more commonly known as financial planning and analysis). What made me fall in love with the role wasOutside of work I love traveling internationally. The idea that every days work was differentlots of projects,of immersing myself into different cultures, getting lots of avenues to express my creativity, the ability to loselost in exploration, and taking a piece of that back to myself in my analysis, building financial models left andmy reality is the epitome of adventure for me. I once right, business partnering, and so on.managed to convince my manager to let me stay abroad in between my audits (this is common), so I wandered After my two years in the program I was promoted to myaround Europe for about two months and wished to next role that was 100 percent planning, forecasting, andstay forever. To date my favorite trip was to Rwanda with reporting in Philly. Here I was responsible for $500MM ofa group of my friends who are from Rwanda. I always sales across 50 branches. This role was my wildest dream.enjoy getting the local experience when traveling, and The location had been acquired about two years prior,this trip was about as local as I could wish for. Aside from which put me in the perfect position to utilize my Financetraveling I keep busy with painting, and now most of my Development Program knowledge to build up reportingfree time goes towards studies for my Master of Business and processes and help implement the new enterpriseAdministration. Im not sure whats next for me, but I do resource planning system. Aside from finance I had theknow that whatever I do I will proudly represent VSU. SPRING 2021 41'