Kevin Patterson

I feel like Grand Valley has a certain culture. It was just a family atmosphere. We're at BDO Seidman. We're right downtown. One of our founding members of BDO was Bill Seaman, and he helped start Grand Valley. We currently have about 200 employees, actually about half of them are from Grand Valley-- Grand Valley grads. And we've had tremendous number of students that either come in as interns and then stay until they move up through the ranks like myself and make partner, or just come in and stay for a little bit and then move on to other companies in town. The caliber of the classroom experience is based on the level the professors here Grand Valley, I felt like was actually world class. So I do feel like the students that come out of Grand Valley are very prepared. They know what they're doing, and from an accounting perspective, they're ready. So normally it takes about 15 years to make partner in mid-teir firm. I was able to do it in 11, and I felt like a lot of that success and speed with moving up came from the experiences I had at Grand Valley and the network I built. I'm Kevin Patterson. I'm an audit partner at BDO Seidman, and my Laker effect is giving back to the community.