{"id":30649,"date":"2018-07-06T08:46:11","date_gmt":"2018-07-06T12:46:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/biznews.fiu.edu\/?p=30649"},"modified":"2018-12-13T08:25:28","modified_gmt":"2018-12-13T13:25:28","slug":"oh-the-places-youll-go-fiu-accounting-students-get-seussian-insights-from-a-corporate-success-story","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/biznews.fiu.edu\/2018\/07\/oh-the-places-youll-go-fiu-accounting-students-get-seussian-insights-from-a-corporate-success-story\/","title":{"rendered":"Oh the places you’ll go: FIU accounting students get “Seuss”ian insights from a corporate success story."},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Will
Will Billings<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Right off the bat it was clear the presentation by Will Billings, vice president and global controller at World Fuel Services, would be different. He brought a copy of Dr. Seuss\u2019 \u201cOh, the Places You\u2019ll Go!\u201d which he asked the graduate students in Associate Professor Antoinette Smith\u2019s IT Auditing class to sign.<\/p>\n

His talk, on June 12, 2018 at FIU\u2019s Ryder Business Building, was billed as a deep dive into the technology changes rippling through the accounting practice. Yet the College of Business accounting students<\/a> got far more. Billings did lay out pathways to success, but it was more treasure map than road routes. Hence, the use of the Dr. Seuss book, which shows how life never unfolds in a straight line, but is more of a curlicue: ups and downs, adventure, adversity and surprises, good and bad.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat he actually talks about are the exact things taking place in one\u2019s career,\u201d said Billings, whose employer, World Fuel, is the largest public company in Florida, and No. 91 on the 2018 Fortune 500 list.<\/p>\n

As a numbers guy, Billings summarized his approach via formula: capabilities + relationships = X, where X stands for success, opportunity, happiness, or almost any of the goals the students are working toward.<\/p>\n

Billings\u2019 own background illustrates how, by pulling together skills, talents, interests and opportunities, one fashions career tools that can take one any place one wants to go.<\/p>\n

Born in Chicago, Billings earned his undergraduate degree in accounting at Southern University and Agricultural and Mechanical College in Baton Rouge. He worked as an assurance supervisor at Ernst & Young (EY), vowing to be the best in assurance.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat was my plan,\u201d he said. \u201cUntil it wasn\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n

He worked in a technical audit role, spending a year in London. \u201cNow I was a worldly technical accountant. I was differentiated.\u201d It was another career building block.<\/p>\n

Yet happiness eluded him. He thought about his deep childhood interests: constructing things and, as the youngest of four, working harmoniously with others. That insight became his lodestar. \u201cIf I could work in teams, collaboratively, and fix problems,\u201d that would lead to the kind of success and happiness he wanted, he said.<\/p>\n

Before coming to World Fuel in 2015, Billings was global controller at GE, earlier working at BDO Seidman, LLP and McDermott International, Inc. Along the way he earned an MBA from Rice University. He found himself attracting positions that engaged his passion for collaboration.<\/p>\n