Audit Student, Audit Intern, Audit Director 

Relationship-building skills helped alumna Kayla Marsh advance at Forvis Mazars

Kayla Marsh, MPA ’12, grew up playing sports and threw javelin as an undergrad at The University of Texas at Austin. So, when she chose accounting as her major, Marsh was immediately drawn to auditing for its collaborative and team-oriented approach. 

“The team-based, face-to-face environment of auditing appealed to me,” says Marsh, who’s now a director in the assurance practice at Forvis Mazars, a top 10, one-brand global network created by the merger of FORVIS and Mazars this year. “From prepping to reviewing and overseeing, everyone on the team has a role in order to reach the end goal.” 

While at McCombs, Marsh had an audit internship at BKD (one of the firms that merged to become FORVIS, which later helped create the Forvis Mazars global network). After graduation, she steadily moved up in the firm. “In auditing, your job changes every few years,” she says. As a new accountant, she first focused on mastery, then moved to reviewing and overseeing. Now, she manages multiple teams and engagements. Along the way, she has honed her listening, collaborating, problem-solving, and relationship-building skills with clients and colleagues. 

Marsh’s current area of expertise concerns private equity-backed healthcare companies, which are highly acquisitive consolidators of health care practices. She works with complex corporate structures, acquisitions and mergers, and reimbursement complexities faced by privately held and governmental health care companies, overseeing multiple projects every year. 

Marsh says she enjoys the dynamic array of people and businesses she gets to work with every day. “Auditing requires you to speak the language of a variety of businesses,” she says. “The learning never stops.” Coaching is an integral part of her job, too, whether she’s mentoring her team members or educating her clients. 

For Marsh, her fifth year at McCombs was her favorite, with its classwork centered largely around case studies. “That year, I learned that sometimes there’s not always one answer, and paths to answers are sometimes not easily defined,” she says. 

What Marsh often notes for aspiring auditors is that in public accounting, and in the client service industry in general, every client served generally knows more about their operations than the auditors they’re working with when an engagement starts. “We must rely on solid communication skills to get the facts necessary to deliver efficient and objective audits,” she says. “That’s where relationship-building becomes key.”

AUDITCHATS: A COMMUNITY BUILT ON THE SMITH FAMILY LEGACY

Last fall, the C. Aubrey Smith Family Foundation donated $1.35 million to the C. Aubrey Smith Center for Auditing Education and Research (CAS), elevating the center’s total endowment to $2 million. As a growing hub for cutting-edge research, educational programs, and engagement, CAS hosts an “AuditChats” series to gather diverse voices in auditing. 

One recent AuditChat parsed the evolution of CPA exam and licensure requirements across the U.S. and debated the 150-hour requirement.