Nancy Korf:  

I hope you're healthy, well, and happy in life. Workplace I started my work experience for ESD #113, where I did payroll during the summers between school years. It came as second nature and several co-workers told me I was a "born accountant." I would laugh and say that accountants are boring and that there was no way on earth I would be one. After college, the ESD hired me to be a field representative in their Mason County office, working with at-risk youth. My job was to teach kids job-search, interviewing and job-keeping skills. It was very challenging and gave me a real appreciation of the life and opportunities that I'd had up until then. Being so self-driven, it was hard for me to understand kids who weren't. Disillusioned with my counseling position, I started a bungy jumping business with a coworker. No lie. For a while, we had the highest jump in the US, 400 feet from a hot air balloon. We didn't have an accountant to keep our books or do our taxes etc., so I started doing it. That's when I decided that maybe I was an accountant after all. I had taken NO accounting classes when I made this decision, so I took several courses at night school while continuing to work. I took the GMAT and suddenly had all sorts of choices, but I chose UW to be close to my boyfriend (who now happens to be my husband, so I guess I made a good choice!). In 2 years and one quarter, I earned a masters in tax accounting and an MBA. My first job as a tax accountant was with KPMG Peat Marwick (now KPMG) in Portland, Oregon. Having owned my own start up company, I was really interested in working with start-ups in the Portland practice. I loved the variety and bustle of working in public accounting and I wasn't thinking of leaving, but one of my managers took a director position at a public company and asked me to go with her. I left KPMG in February, 1997, narrowly escaping the individual busy season! From 1997 to the end of 2005, I worked at Mentor Graphics, a software company that designs the software tools that other companies use in designing circuits and printed circuit boards. My role started out as an international tax preparer, doing the US reporting for Mentor's subsidiaries all over the world. Everything I learned about international tax was from on-the-job training and lucky for me Mentor had a complicated tax structure so I learned a lot! I became a manager of international tax, working in the areas of transfer pricing, cost-sharing, and compliance supervision, acquisition integration, and the always-interesting "other duties as assigned." For a few years, I was also the manager of the payroll department. I truly loved my job and the entire tax team at Mentor and am grateful for the time I spent there. But as 2005 came to a close, some changes in our family life made it possible for me to do something I'd dreamed about for three years - become a stay-at-home mom. For now, I've hung up my CPA hat and am at home with two young children. As a perfectionist / workaholic / competitive person, I've always worked hard in any job I've held, but I can truthfully say that I've worked hardest at being a mom. One of these days I'd like to return to work in the tax field, but until then you'll find me at the playground or under a pile of laundry.