After 28 years as a registered nurse in neonatal intensive care and operating rooms, Gina Stramiello, GCIA’24, was ready for something new.
“I was just burned out of the clinical aspects of healthcare. I had been looking for something else for quite a while, but I’d already earned a master’s degree in nursing. I really didn’t want to go down another expensive path just to not be happy,” Gina said. “I talked to my family. My dad is an accounting professor at Kelley and my sister is an internal auditor with the Department of Defense. My dad asked me, ‘What do you like to do, what things do you enjoy?’”
Gina says she liked processes and seeing how things work. She likes understanding what works well and what can be improved. Her father, Kelley Accounting Professor Reed Smith, suggested that Gina look into the field of internal audit. The Graduate Certificate in Internal Audit at the Kelley School of Business Indianapolis offers 12 credit hours in learning how to evaluate a company’s internal financial or operational controls.
The program begins with a hands-on weekend case study. Gina thought this would be a good way to try it out.
“I used the weekend case study as a way to just sample internal audit to see if it’s something I’d be interested in,” Gina said. “I had nothing to lose, so I took the class, and I loved it. I realized this sounded like something I would be interested in, and I registered for fall classes in the graduate certificate.”
Internal audit professionals serve as consultants and trusted advisors within a company. They interact with teams across the organization to identify risk, monitor operations and compliance, and evaluate the effectiveness of internal controls.
“Once I started the Graduate Certificate in Internal Audit, I fell in love with it and wanted to start looking at internships,” Gina said.
Internal audit is a growing field in Indiana, with about 200 positions going unfilled each year. The Kelley School program not only prepares graduate students for a successful career in internal audit by offering training in topics like fraud and forensic accounting, IT audit, and ethical accounting, but students also get to network with professionals in the industry. The case study course includes local internal audit professionals who facilitate small break-out sessions to discuss a case study and share insights into this field.
This is how Gina met her future employer. She took an IT audit class taught by Kelley Associate Professor Jim Reinhard, who’s also the senior director of internal audit at Simon Property Group. She interviewed there when a job came open.
Gina recently took the role of staff auditor at Simon shortly before finishing the graduate certificate. While she says it’s a challenge to change careers after nearly 30 years in nursing, Gina says Kelley faculty have been very supportive in her new career direction, and she feels prepared to take on a new profession.
Through these conversations, she also gained a new perspective on her seemingly unrelated career choices. Though nursing is a completely different position than internal auditor, Gina says she learned that her first career gave her transferrable skills like workplace communications.
“I had underestimated just how much life experience means, particularly in business. I can use all the skills that I’ve learned just from communicating with people in internal audit because you do a lot of asking questions,” Gina said. “I didn’t think that four classes would give me the background that I needed, but what I learned, and the skills I bring to the table helped me succeed. It’s never too late to learn something new, and if you need a change, don’t let lack of experience slow you down. It’s worth it.”
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