More than Just Numbers

Heading into her senior year at Moravian, Fang Zhang ’00 was in a crisis. Since coming from China to the United States, she’d tried studying education and nursing, but neither had quite worked out for her. “It was the lowest valley of my life,” remembers Zhang. She opened up about her problems to business professor John Rossi, who passed away in August 2021. He often attended international student events to try different foods and talk with students. “He said, ‘Why don’t you try accounting?’” Zhang liked working with people, so the last thing she wanted to do was sit in a room crunching numbers. But Rossi suggested a different path, pointing out that her teaching skills and attention to detail would make her the perfect auditor.

“I said, ‘Let me give it a try,’” Zhang recalls. That decision led to a 25-year career working as an auditor in the Harrisburg office of KPMG, one of the Big Four accounting firms. This year, Marquis Who’s Who Top Executives recognized her for her “dedication, achievements, and leadership in finance” and for “delivering top-quality services to clients and making a significant impact in the audit field.” In addition, the publication called out her mentorship of the next generation of auditors in KPMG’s ranks. The honor caps an unlikely journey for Zhang, who didn’t even know how to use a computer when she first arrived in the United States almost 30 years ago and has since risen to the top of her profession.

An elementary English teacher in her native Shenyang, Zhang originally traveled to the US to improve her language skills, coming to Bethlehem on the suggestion of a friend of her father’s, who taught at Lehigh. At Moravian, she faced significant culture shock, having to quickly teach herself typing and record professors’ lectures on a tape recorder so she could play them over and over until she understood them. She was bolstered by an international students’ club where she met her future husband, Hong Sun ’00, and by Moravian’s supportive faculty. “I ran into so many people with kind hearts who were willing to help me with my struggling and never looked down on me,” Zhang says.

Zhang took naturally to auditing, which she found was as much about patiently teaching others how to better run their businesses as it was about crunching columns of numbers. After an internship at a local accounting firm, she never dreamed of applying for a job at one of the Big Four firms but was again encouraged by Rossi, who gave her a pass on her final exam to attend the interview. It turned out that her background in education and nursing was exactly what KPMG was looking for, as their major clients in Harrisburg were government organizations such as colleges and hospitals.

Over her career, Zhang built up a specialty working with government clients such as the Pennsylvania Higher Education Assistance Agency, which manages financial aid for millions of students in the commonwealth. One of the most challenging and rewarding parts of the job, she says, is staying a step ahead of the ever-changing technology clients use. While the accounting industry can be demanding, with long hours during the busy season, Zhang has benefited from a flexible work program that’s allowed her to spend summers traveling in China and keep her work and life in balance by teaching Sunday school and volunteering with Little Star Chinese School and the Central Pennsylvania Chinese Association.

Along the way, her naturally positive attitude and enthusiasm for her clients’ welfare has built an appreciative following among both employees and clients, who ask for her by name to work on their accounts. “Every day is exciting,” says Zhang, “because I am constantly interacting with smart people and learning from them. At the same time, I enjoy teaching others.” —Michael Blanding