In the multinational regulatory landscape, Jiaqi Ma is dedicated to efficiently completing audit projects compliant with industry standards, leveraging professional auditing methodologies. She graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Accounting (2019) and a Master of Science in Professional Accounting (2020) from the Stillman School of Business at Seton Hall University, both conferred with high honors and repeated placement on the Dean’s List. With respect to her 2019 immersive role, an intensive internship at a Rural Commercial Bank, Shan Xi, China strengthened her theoretical foundation at the operational level. During this internship experience, Ms. Ma assisted in bank operations, including opening pension plan bank cards, maintaining Point-of-Sale machines, and contributed materially to the bank’s non-performing loan (NPL) recovery plan through collaborative teamwork. Her efforts successfully reclaimed 1% of total delinquent loans (equivalent to USD 98,700), directly enhancing the bank’s operational efficiency. This early practical immersion solidified her core principle: Professional excellence lies in risk anticipation, not remedies after the fact. Her career trajectory has been forged within one of the global Big Four leading accounting firms, where she has applied professional auditing methodologies to execute audit projects aligned with industry standard practices.
Core Career Trajectory & Technical Execution
Ms. Ma commenced her professional journey in July 2021 at one of the global Big Four leading accounting firms in New Jersey, advancing to Senior Auditor through the firm’s structured promotion path. This appointment marked an advancement in her career, initiating her involvement in critical projects requiring elevated technical proficiency and team management capabilities. In core auditing tasks, she executes work involving specialized valuation assessments, including Level III investment testing, servicing diverse hedge funds and private equity investment portfolios. In the insurance sector, she oversees comprehensive contract validation procedures for reinsurance testing, involving complex analyses of Premiums and Claims, Commissions, and Deferred Acquisition Costs (DAC), systematically evaluating operational risks for regulated clients in dynamic markets. Concurrently, she ensures project compliance with stringent U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) filing deadlines by coordinating cross-border team resources across Tax, Valuation, and Actuarial functions. Additionally, she independently performs substantive testing procedures for cash and receivables in the utilities sector, addressing intricate transactional flows and financial statement assertions. These initiatives demanded authoritative Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) interpretation and precise client communication, substantially enhancing clients’ internal control systems aligned with COSO Framework while mitigating operational risks in volatile markets, thereby accumulating expertise in risk identification and process optimization.
Professional Capability Building & Practical Experience Accumulation
Her robust technical proficiency is grounded in diverse foundational practices from early career stages. Her professional growth began during pivotal internships: During a September 2019 Tax Internship, she prepared state regulation-compliant filings using DRAKE application and advised clients based on financial analysis, necessitating meticulous interpretation of regulatory variations. Subsequently, in her Accounting Internship at a New Jersey accounting firm from January to March 2020, she further executed core auditing procedures including tie-outs and cross-referencing operations. A July 2020 Audit Internship further refined her operational expertise through hands-on application of auditing tools such as AS2 while actively expanding her professional network. This sequential, progressive experience systematically cultivated her operational competence with professional financial reporting systems, spanning audit trail documentation, financial data visualization audits using Tableau, and data processing across enterprise accounting platforms such as Oracle and QuickBooks, positioning her to effectively support complex audit project engagements. These practical capabilities directly elevated service delivery efficiency for sophisticated projects.
As a Certified Public Accountant (CPA) licensed in the United States and AICPA member fluent in Mandarin, Ms. Ma leverages professional tools to drive audit execution. Institutional stakeholders acknowledge her ability to identify control deficiencies through audit testing and propose process optimization solutions. This professionalism mirrors her rigorous approach honed at Seton Hall University, evidenced by repeated Dean’s List with distinction honors and receipt of the Transfer Scholarship, RJR Nabisco Scholarship, and Thomas E. Reilly Scholarship. Her bilingual proficiency measurably enhances cross-border communication efficiency in multinational projects.
New Staff Guidance & Project Coordination Capacity
Ms. Ma proactively strengthens team capabilities by implementing structured technical development programs. Leveraging the firm’s established coaching framework, she guides junior colleagues following in navigating audit workflows, accounting system operations, and compliance requirements across varied business sectors. By sharing her technical experience in project execution, she assists teams in resolving application challenges with specific audit tools and delivers scalable solutions for client engagements. Additionally, Ms. Ma’s linguistic proficiency enables her to coordinate cross-border projects requiring alignment with multinational regulatory considerations and diverse stakeholder reporting expectations.
Professional Advancement & Execution Focus
Looking ahead to her future career development priorities, Ms. Ma plans to deepen and expand her specialized technical execution capabilities within the current scope of her responsibilities. Her primary goal is to enhance audit precision by applying advanced tools and methodologies more effectively. Drawing on her extensive Tableau data analysis experience from previous projects, she will focus on detecting anomalies in financial records and analyzing transaction patterns. Concurrently, building on her hands-on experience in state regulations and SEC compliance, particularly her understanding of regulatory requirements for portfolios and hedge funds, she commits to continuous monitor and study of evolving new audit standards and best practices in the Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) disclosure sector to ensure her audit work remains synchronized with regulatory shifts. Furthermore, her cross-border communication proficiency honed through offshore finance project execution will facilitate smoother collaboration with geographically dispersed team members, optimizing information synchronization and resource allocation, which directly enhances management efficiency for tracking regulatory policies and meeting filing deadlines in multinational project. This defined technical advancement pathway does not constitute sweeping structural reform, but rather focuses on actionable refinements rooted in her frontline audit practice. These encompass continuously optimizing sampling techniques and methodologies for specialized valuation assessments (like Level III investment stress testing) in hedge fund projects to enhance testing efficiency and coverage depth; further refining precision in validating complex policy clauses, such as Premiums and Claims, Commissions, and Deferred Acquisition Costs (DAC), during insurance contract and reinsurance testing; and simultaneously exploring enhancements to the efficacy and efficiency of procedures executed in the utilities sector, including Cash Conversion Cycle (CCC) analytics, Assertion-based Accounts Receivable testing, Controls Testing, and Substantive Procedures. All technical upgrades and practical explorations concentrate on reinforcing the precision, efficacy, and reliability of audit procedures through more granular execution details, enhanced team collaboration, and deepened application of tools and methods, thereby steadily elevating audit project quality and advancing the fundamental mission of the auditing profession.
