Down to Earth: Yana Edinovich (BBA ’19, MS ’22)
March 18, 2021Maybe it’s because she’s been dancing since the age of eight, but Yana Edinovich has a knack for pivoting.
In 2013, Yana, a Russian native, immigrated to the U.S. for a job as a circus acrobat at an Atlantic City casino. (She specializes in the aerial hoop.) A year later, that property—along with several of its neighbors—declared bankruptcy, and she found herself out of work.
She moved to New York City in search of employment, enrolled at Baruch College, and earned a BBA degree from the Zicklin School of Business in 2019. Her plan back then was to combine her newly gained digital marketing skills with her dance background and launch her own studio.
It might have worked—if she hadn’t fallen one day from an aerial hoop during practice.
Yana was lucky enough not to need surgery, but she spent two years in intensive rehab. Then, midway through her recovery, COVID-19 hit New York: “I decided enough is enough—I needed a more stable line of work.”
So she pivoted again. Last fall, she enrolled in Zicklin’s MS in Accountancy program and plans to become a CPA. She credits the Graduate Career Management Center, in particular career counselor Annie Himmelsbach (also a former dancer), with helping her land her current internship with accounting firm EisnerAmper.
The Executives on Campus program was another godsend. Regular conversations with Yana’s mentor, Paul Koren (BBA’55, MBA ’66), a founder of the EOC program and retired partner at Goldstein Golub Kessler LLP, helped her expand her thinking about accounting and decide on a specialty (audit).
“Growing up in Russia, I thought of accounting as a very stable job, but one that doesn’t really go anywhere,” Yana admits. “But after talking to professionals like Paul, I realized it’s an amazing profession that is very intellectual and high level. In audit especially, I’m constantly challenged to explain how the business works, why certain transactions are happening, if they make sense, and so on. It’s like being a detective.”