Melissa Georgiou is a current Honours student with Griffith University’s Department of Business Strategy and Innovation (BSI). She is a Fellow of CPA Australia and has over 23 years commercial accounting experience across many industries. Mel took a leap of faith in 2016 and left a secure Executive Management role to study an MBA with Griffith University and pursue a new passion.
Keen to give back to and share her love of the accounting profession, Mel secured some sessional accounting undergraduate teaching and after graduating was excited to be offered the role of teaching the Accounting course in the MBA. Mel was also actively involved with CPA Australia in Queensland, most recently as the 2018 CPA Australia Queensland President where she grew more interested, and alarmed, by the declining trend of domestic students undertaking accounting studies. Why?
Unbeknown to her, an Academic working in another MBA subject had noticed Mel; both as a prior student and now as an educator. A surprise phone call came asking if she would be interested in the Honours program as an avenue to pursue those burning questions regarding the accounting profession? Further, would she be interested in being the first BSI scholarship recipient?
Mel’s Honours journey started in February 2018.Frustrated by findings that perception of the accountant as a dull number cruncher have persisted, despite technological disruption that will see accounting as a very different profession, Mel found her passion — to research those perceptions, how and why they have formed and to work with industry, professional bodies and educational institutions to move beyond traditional capabilities to ensure continued relevance of the profession.
“I was honoured and humbled to be blessed with the opportunity to work across the disciplines of strategy and accounting,” she said.
Passionate about the need to share her work, Mel applied to and was accepted to present her research idea and proposed methodology at the 2019 Griffith Professional Futures Conference next month.
Studying an Honours course provides a great balance of learning foundation research skills whilst having the opportunity to apply those learnings to undertake specialist research into a particular area of interest and become a subject matter expert. In particular, in can open doors to innovative ideas that inspire new ways of thinking that can aide not only one’s personal journey but also that of a profession.
Applications for the 2019 scholarship close on Sunday 3 February. Please click here to find out more about the 2019 BSI Honours scholarship, or contact the Honours Program Convenor, Dr Katrina Radford.