Summer is super for an intern at Cooper

Financial accounting major Laura Penza is spending her summer working at Cooper Tire & Rubber Company’s headquarters in Findlay, Ohio. The focus of Laura’s internship is to gain experience with internal audits.  She is responsible for planning and performing operational, financial, and compliance internal audits; performing Sarbanes Oxley controls testing; and providing support for an external audit.

Laura explained what she hopes to learn at Cooper: “In audit, you are able to see so many different sides of the business. With this internship, I hope to be able to learn more about the different departments in the corporation and get a better understanding of what their purpose is and how they function. I have the opportunity to work with both internal and external auditors which really gives me a good perspective if auditing is something I would like to do after I graduate.

After graduation, Laura plans on doing some traveling for a month. In the fall, she intends to pursuing her master’s degree and then sitting for the CPA exam. Her goal is to graduate with a full time job offer from a corporation in either the marketing or accounting fields. But Laura has a bigger dream in mind “My goal is to work for ESPN one day” she said. “If I don’t have the opportunity to work right after graduation, I will be going back to Florence, Italy for the summer and travel around Europe.”
Laura’s advice to future students? “Do what you’re passionate about. Life is too short to not be enjoying what you are doing.”

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