Eleven Bermudian university students completed a 12-week cultivating internship programme with KPMG in Bermuda.

Wanda Armstrong, the firm’s HR and graduate recruitment manager, said: “The students were able to see first-hand how employment opportunities and training with KPMG is the start of a rewarding and lucrative career path. In addition to gaining valuable work experience, our interns took advantage of working along with our professional audit, tax and advisory staff in our student-friendly environment.”

The participating students were Shonte’ Campbell (Wofford College), Kris Furbert (European School of Economics in Madrid), Hannah Deevy (Oxford Brookes University), Briana Buchanan (University of Alabama), William Gardner (University of Edinburgh), Jotessa Musson (St. Mary’s University), Tatyana Butterfield (Temple University), William Mackenzie (University of Bristol), Claudia Hall (University West of England), Amy Green (University of Exeter) and Marquedelle Philip Rodriguez (Berkeley Institute 2014 Graduate).

The students started their internship by participating in a three-week project for five local non-profit organisations. The tasks included a sustainability analysis of long-term fundraising strategies; transitioning manual accounts to an automated accounting system and focusing on strategies to best collect and collate information and assist in recommending formal procedures for cash management and revenue systems.

Don Mackenzie, chairman of the Family Centre Board, said: “I just wanted to commend KPMG for the intern presentations — it was nice to see all of the interns presenting and learning these important skills. I was able to gain a little understanding in person as to the way that KPMG interacts and provides mentoring and development to the interns. This reflects on a very good culture within KPMG as well.”

The students were also responsible for the planning, organising and filming of KPMG’s annual summer K-Nect networking event held at the Lemon Tree Café on July 23, 2014. K-Nect provides any Bermudian student interested in studying accounting, finance or other business-related subjects an opportunity to meet and socialise with KPMG staff and find out more about what a career with KPMG can offer. This year’s K-Nect event was a success and was attended by over 45 students.

The students also participated in the Centre of Philanthropy’s Summer Intern Community Day at the National Museum of Bermuda and attended professional development workshops.

Steve Woodward, Managing Director and leader of KPMG’s Graduate Programme, said: “The 2014 Internship programme has been an enormous success. We have been extremely impressed with the high quality of this year’s group of interns, and we expect that a large number of them will return after graduation to pursue a full-time career with KPMG in Bermuda. In fact five of our current intake of full-time graduates who will be starting with us in September 2014 were recruited directly from our internship programme.”

Brianna Buchanan, 2014 KPMG Scholarship Award winner added: “The internship at KPMG has been one of the most rewarding experiences in my life. It was gratifying to work with other motivated, like-minded and driven students. I was placed in the Tax department where I was greeted by friendly co-workers who truly wanted to help me grow and learn. I didn’t have much experience with tax; however there was always someone willing to give me a helping hand to better understand.”

William Gardner added: “I was hoping to get experience with a wide range of companies and projects. The internship has exceeded my highest expectations. I was lucky to be able to intern in the Advisory department. I was involved in many different projects, ranging from writing an internal report on Chinese investment in the Caribbean, writing research memos for other projects, helping to run the distribution of a KPMG publication and taking notes in some very interesting meetings.”