Accounting Major
Mutare, Zimbabwe
Rungano means "fairy tale" in Shona, the language Rungano Nyambuya's Zimbabwean family speaks -- but she's too busy putting together the skills she'll need as a corporate accountant to think much about fairy tales just now. Recruited by a U.S. embassy program that helps exceptional students win entry into American colleges, she found in Ithaca an institution that offered her training as an accountant -- plus an abundance of opportunities to learn leadership, teamwork, time management, and communication skills. "Getting As in classes is not enough in corporate America," Rungano says. "You have to challenge yourself."
As a member of the Dean's Student Advisory Committee, she has offered evaluations of the curriculum and commented on proposals for the new business school building. She also has served as a peer adviser in the EXCEL program, which helps new students learn skills to improve their college performance. "I feel that I've been blessed -- I've received so many opportunities," she says. "I just want other students to be able to have the same things I did."
Last year she found an exceptionally challenging opportunity to integrate the skills she'd learned. She helped reconstitute the school's minority students' association as a chapter of the National Association of Black Accountants. This year she's the chapter president. Joining NABA required filing extensive documentation, but the results were worth it; the contacts Ithaca students were able to make through NABA have won them attention from major companies. "The internship opportunities that have already come out of this -- they're interviews we never would have gotten otherwise," she notes.
In fact, interviews conducted at a NABA conference got Rungano a summer internship at Ernst and Young. She acquitted herself so well that the company offered her a permanent position, which she has accepted.
International student works hard, throws herself into helping others, and achieves professional success? It sounds like a fairy tale, after all.
