The day-to-day of Naylea Jacobo’s career once looked like this: standing in a lab, pipette in hand, moving liquid from one container to the next. Again. And again. With a biology degree from NC State, Jacobo had built her early career in life sciences and pharmaceuticals as a molecular technologist. But after two years in the lab, she knew the work was not where she wanted to stay.

“I was pretty tired of doing the same thing every day,” she said. “I wanted something that required more problem-solving.”

Around the same time, nearly 600 miles away, Chad Perz was confronting his own turning point, though his looked quite different. For more than a decade, Perz worked in television, editing everything from crime documentaries to episodes of Keeping Up With the Kardashians. Much of his professional life was spent behind an editing desk, assembling storylines frame by frame. But as work in the television industry slowed and his family grew, he began looking for a career with more stability.

Neither Jacobo nor Perz expected accounting to be the answer. Yet both found themselves in the NC State Jenkins Master of Accounting (MAC) program, seated beside classmates like Renee Rodriguez, who arrived by a more traditional route after studying accounting as an undergraduate at NC State.

While their paths into the program have little in common, that contrast is part of what defines the Jenkins MAC program experience.

Strengthened by differences

The Jenkins MAC is not built around a room full of students with identical training or career goals. They arrive with different experiences, instincts and ways of seeing problems, and those differences shape the classroom environment as much as the curriculum itself.

For Jacobo, entering accounting meant learning an entirely new language. She had expected difficult math. What surprised her was that accounting’s challenge had little to do with numbers and far more to do with logic.

“It’s not that the math is hard,” she said. “It’s understanding what the numbers mean and how everything connects.”

Perz had a similar adjustment. He entered the program, in his words, knowing “next to nothing” about accounting. Debits and credits were a foreign concept. But once he gave himself room to be “new” at something, the unfamiliarity became part of the appeal.

“No two individuals approach the material in quite the same way. That is one thing that sets our program apart from other cookie-cutter MAC programs.”

“I found it kind of fun to see how it all comes together,” he said.

Rodriguez, who entered the MAC through NC State’s Accelerated Bachelor’s/Master’s pathway, encountered a different challenge. Graduate coursework pushed her beyond memorizing accounting fundamentals and into applying them in more subtle and specialized ways.

“The shift was from learning the rules to learning how to use them,” she said.

The mix of those diverse backgrounds and perspectives is a key part of what makes the Jenkins MAC program so unique, explains Scott Showalter, the program’s director. “When students work through case studies, presentations and team assignments, no two individuals approach the material in quite the same way. That is one thing that sets our program apart from other cookie-cutter MAC programs across the country.”

Applying their perspective

Jacobo often naturally filters accounting concepts through the lens of her scientific background. In courses involving IT risk and controls, she naturally gravitates toward systems thinking, risk mitigation and operational safeguards. While some classmates evaluate a problem from a financial reporting perspective, she often asks a different set of questions first: What could fail? Where is the exposure? What backup plan is in place if the system breaks?

That instinct, she said, helped her recognize an early fit with IT audit.

Perz contributes differently. His years in television sharpened skills he never expected to use in graduate accounting coursework, particularly writing, communication and the ability to shape complicated information into something others can understand.

“I’ve been surprised by how much writing there is,” he said. “That background has helped more than I expected.”

Even Rodriguez, who entered with the strongest accounting foundation of the three, says the cohort’s diversity has expanded her learning. One of her most memorable classroom experiences came while working alongside a student with a background in biology. The two approached accounting standards from different angles, teaching each other as they went through the material.

Working alongside peers from other backgrounds has changed how many students think about what accounting work entails.

“You really can do anything with accounting.”

Jacobo entered the program assuming accounting meant financial statements, tax returns and traditional public accounting. She now sees a field that extends into cybersecurity, consulting, forensics, entrepreneurship and nearly every industry sector.

“You really can do anything with accounting,” she said.

Perz’s understanding has shifted in similar ways. What began as a practical career pivot has developed into a genuine fascination with the profession’s complexity and its future direction.

“The more granular the information gets, the more interesting it becomes,” he said.

Rodriguez now sees accounting less as a numbers profession and more as one built on analysis, communication and judgment.

The program has also sharpened each student’s sense of where to go next. Jacobo plans to pursue IT audit, a path that draws together her scientific background and accounting training. Rodriguez is preparing for the CPA exam while exploring where she may ultimately specialize. Perz, still early in the program, is weighing which corner of the profession best matches his interests as he continues his studies.

“What we see in the Jenkins MAC is that the best accountants do not all come from the same background, and they do not all head in the same direction after graduation,” Showalter says. “Those options are one of the many strengths of the accounting profession.”