Harbert College of Business senior Lindsey McCreight’s diligence as a student has taken her far. While maintaining a perfect 4.0 GPA, McCreight has also gained valuable internship experience in both private and public sectors of accounting during her time at Auburn.  

Originally from Kingsport, Tennessee, McCreight came close to attending the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. However, her older brother Joshua, a student in Auburn’s Samuel Ginn College of Engineering at the time, secured a guest pass for her to attend an Auburn football game while she was deciding on where to go to college.  

“It was that day the I decided I wanted to come to Auburn because it felt like home,” she said, recalling how her tour of Harbert also influenced her decision to study business.   

Like many Harbert students, the guidance in BUSI 1010 helped to set McCreight on the path to success. In this course, she discovered her analytic and self-described Type A personality was best suited for the School of Accountancy (SOA).  

“I wanted to see more than just one side of business,” she said, so she added both finance and marketing minors to her studies.  

Because of her close connections with Harbert professors, McCreight was encouraged to apply to be a peer instructor in the Office of Professional & Career Development where she strengthened her interview and professional development skills while also realizing what a privilege it is to be able to teach students.  

“It's one thing to learn how to do something yourself, but it's completely another to be able to teach it to another person,” McCreight said.  

The Value of Internships 

“Resources with Auburn were absolutely pertinent,” she said.  

With resources such as Beta Alpha Psi, SOA’s Meet The Firms, and guidance from faculty and staff within the SOA, McCreight built connections with a variety of companies. This helped her land an internship with Textron in the summer of 2022 and then with KPMG, one of the Big Four accounting firms, in the summer of 2023. 

In her Textron internship, McCreight worked in their accounting division where she helped collect $154,000 in billing while also learning about the supply chain management and finance industries.  

At KPMG, she worked in the investigations, disputes, and compliance area where she learned about forensic accounting. She recalls one project where she conducted an investigation related to fraud which required her to use a different type of deductive reasoning that she had never used in her accounting classes. McCreight said that this internship made her feel energized about her work as an accountant.  

“This is like a puzzle, and I get to figure out who this is and what this looks like and why it all fits together,” McCreight said about the KPMG project.  

KPMG was also a great internship experience for McCreight because of their dedication to community service. Through its Community Impact Day, where employees volunteer in their local communities, McCreight felt aligned with the company culture. She has accepted a position with KPMG starting in 2025, after she finishes her Master of Accountancy degree. 

“Getting to work with people and in the community in addition to just your job is huge,” said McCreight, who has volunteered on building projects in her hometown, played bass in her church worship band, and served as vice president in the Auburn Martial Arts Club.  

Looking ahead  

McCreight has always wanted to be a teacher of some kind and plans to return to academia and earn a PhD in accounting for this reason—a goal she set based on the example set by her Harbert professors and the encouragement they provided her.  

“I know a lot of being a professor is also research, which is also something that I personally am fascinated by.”