Enron Scandal Inspires Top BMACC Student in Career Choice
Hy Truong, BMACC Graduate '21
Twenty years ago, the Enron financial scandal rocked America and brought down the entire company along with their accounting organization, Arthur Andersen.
Truong’s favorite SDSU moment was when he did a study abroad program in China during the winter of 2020. “I made many friends during my trip and got to travel to many cool places in Shanghai and Beijing including the Great Wall and the Forbidden City.”
Hy Truong was an elementary school student in Saigon (or Ho Chi Minh City), Vietnam when news of the Enron scandal broke. But nearly two decades later, he was a student at San Diego Mesa College and as he watched the Academy Award-nominated documentary, “Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room,” in one of his classes, he realized what he wanted to do in his career. “After watching the documentary, I found a calling to be an auditor to protect the vulnerable investors through my work,” said Truong. “With that in mind, I chose accounting as my major when I applied to San Diego State University.”
Truong and his family moved to San Diego after he finished high school and when he entered Mesa, he was unsure about which major he wanted to pursue. However, after his first financial accounting course, he realized that he was “quite good” in the subject and “could ace exams with perfect scores.”
While still working on his associate’s degree at Mesa, Truong applied to the Charles W. Lamden School of Accountancy at SDSU’s Fowler College of Business to earn his BMACC degree. The BMACC program offered him both a bachelor’s and a master’s degree while providing him with the necessary academic credits to sit for the California CPA exams. “I learned that SDSU has the best accounting program in San Diego,” he said. “So, it was a no brainer for me to choose to go to SDSU.”
As it turns out, he’s still “quite good” in accounting: Truong recently learned that he earned the distinction of being the top BMACC graduate in the Fowler College of Business for 2021 and will graduate with summa cum laude honors. He was also awarded SDSU’s 2021 Federation of Schools of Accountancy Award which recognizes the outstanding student from each member school enrolled in a fifth-year accounting master’s degree program.
Post-graduation, Truong will be working at EY as an auditor and he will also begin studying for the California CPA exam. When asked about his most important lesson at SDSU, he said: “Keep going when things get hard and don’t give up. Opportunities are there, but you have to prepare yourself well, so you are ready when they come.”
