For the Dutch version, click here As External Affairs, Simo is responsible for the contact with the current and future partners of Asset | Accounting & Finance. Next to this, he coordinates the Accounting Expedition Committee and the Orientation Committee. He is also responsible for the organization of the Master Experience Days Accountancy and Finance and the FinanceDays. In this article, Simo explains what his position entails and how he has experienced a year as External Affairs of Asset | Accounting & Finance. Who am I? My name is Simo Smeets and I am 22 years old. In the summer of 2020, I completed the Bachelor of Economics & Business Economics at Tilburg University. I am from South Limburg, but I have been living in Tilburg for almost four years now. After the TOP week, I immediately became a member of Asset, first as an active member of Asset | Economics, and later also at Asset | Accounting & Finance. Before my board year, I was part of the investment group A&F Investments and the Sports Committee within A&F. Why a board year? Even before my board year, I have always experienced my time at Asset as very pleasant. I soon found out that the events that Asset organizes connect well with the things that I find fun and important. The association offers students a nice mix between formal events, where companies introduce themselves in different ways, and informal events, where you can get to know fellow students better. I soon realized that I wanted to contribute to Asset myself. During the final year of my Bachelor, my orientation to choose the right master began. I found out that I doubted between the Master Accountancy, Financial Economics, and Finance. A board year at Asset | Accounting & Finance would help me to make a good assessment for the Master that I ultimately want to pursue and to develop myself. “Keeping each other up to date is very important to keep the ship sailing in the right direction.” Why External Affairs and what does a year like External Affairs look like? As External Affairs of Asset | Accounting & Finance, I am in close contact with many companies from the Financial sector. This is also the sector in which I expect to work after my Master’s. To make my choice for a Master, it is important to get to know different companies in the field. This has certainly happened during my board year. External Affairs is a position with many variations. No two days are the same. In the summer you start with the summer conversations. You introduce yourself to all partners and, together with your predecessor, tell them what will be organized during the new academic year. In this way, you get to know the companies quickly. You will make new contacts and improve your soft skills very much during this period. As time goes on and the General Members Meeting gets closer, your predecessor will let go more and more and you will have to do more work on your own. You notice that your professional skills get a boost during this period. You become the face of the association for partners and other stakeholders. Good cooperation with the winter External, in my case that was Evelien van den Broek in the first semester and now Myron Boere is of great importance. Every week you plan a meeting together with the winter External to discuss, in addition to the necessary informal things, the state of affairs regarding the business contact. Keeping each other up to date is very important to keep the ship sailing in the right direction. External Affairs in corona time When I applied as a board member at Asset | Accounting & Finance last year, we were already in the COVID-19 pandemic. I see it as an extra challenge to organize good events despite the necessary measures. We can conclude from the evaluations of participants of our events that we have certainly succeeded in that this year. In terms of formal events, I am proud of how we, together with the Accounting Expedition Committee, have put together a good online Accounting Expedition. Besides, it is important that we also continue to organize informal events, so that the social cohesion of our members is safeguarded. Naturally, the rules applicable at that time must be taken into consideration when organizing such events. Of course, I hope that next year the events can take place in a physical form again. During the first wave, our office, also called “the rooms” in many Asset members’ vocabulary, was unfortunately closed. Luckily, that decision was reversed at the beginning of 2021 and we can now work a few days a week from our office again. This makes it a lot more fun because you also meet the rest of the Asset board members from time to time. We are namely allowed to be present with a maximum of 15 board members per day. For me, this has been an enormous support. What do you do as External Affairs? As I briefly stated earlier in this article, you deal as External Affairs of Asset | Accounting & Finance with everything that concerns our partners. This involves the acquisition of partners for all our events and social media exposure and keeping our career portal Career Platform Tilburg up to date. As an External, it is important that you can bundle the opinions and goals of multiple stakeholders so that you keep everyone happy. As an External, you also have a seat in the Acquisition Meeting of Asset as a whole. This is a weekly meeting in which the external affairs of the entire Asset are discussed. This is often the most looking forward meeting because you always go in well prepared and have to come up with good arguments to achieve your goals. In addition to all these meetings, you are responsible for coordinating the Accounting Expedition Committee and the Orientation Committee. This
A board year as Chairman of Asset | Accounting & Finance – Richard van der Vlist
For the Dutch version, click here As Chairman, Richard is responsible for the policy of Asset | Accounting & Finance and the external communication to parties such as Asset and the University. He also coordinates A&F Investments and the Alumni Committee. In this article, Richard tells you what his job entails and how he spends his days as Chairman of Asset | Accounting & Finance. In this article, I would like to share with you my story as chairman of perhaps one of the most special years of my life. This is quit a big thing to say, being a former censor of T.S.C. st. Olof, which means that I have spent many evenings and nights behind the bar at Asgard. I have never regretted my choice for doing a board year. However, I am often asked: “What do you do every day? In this article, I want to answer that and get rid of that question once and for all. I will take you with me in an “average” week as chairman of Asset | Accounting & Finance. Monday 9.00h: Every Monday we start with the regular board meeting. This starts at 9 AM, assuming that everyone is on time and no one is left in the kitchen to prepare a three-course breakfast. During the meeting, we discuss a lot of different topics; the daily tasks, our committees, events, and all relevant topics on Asset General level. 13.00h: After this meeting, we often have lunch together and then everyone goes back to work on his or her own tasks. When we are not in our rooms, we often work together in smaller groups of two to three. Tuesday 10.00h: Tuesday morning starts with a meeting at Asset General level, or in other words: GB. This is a meeting with all the chairmen of the Asset departments, the EBT, and the MAK (supported by Asset). Within the Asset General Board, I am the Treasurer. This means that I am the coordinator of all the Treasurers of Asset and have the ultimate responsibility for the financial health of each department and Asset as a whole. GB is led by Joshua Stassen, the current Independent Chairman. Despite Joshua’s heavy Limburg accent, GB is often one of the more enjoyable meetings of the week. You find out what is going on in other departments and what they are up against. Thanks to Simo and Joshua, I can understand Limburg better and better. A board year provides a lot for your CV: soft and hard skills, and even new languages 14.00h: In the afternoon, together with Joshua, I discuss the financial position of the entire association and which strategic plans we want to work on. As chairman, apart from managing my own department, I also have a lot of responsibilities in the general board. This dual responsibility makes my position as chairman a very diverse and challenging position. This is something I personally gain a lot of energy from. 15.00h: Next, I have a meeting with Joyce Ladenstein and Tom van de Louw from Student Career Services and with Mira Gorris and Judith Künneke from the Accountancy department of the university. Simo also joins in. As chairman, I am mainly responsible for the contact with the university. We help each other and spar on various topics such as education, student development, and our formal events. All our meetings are online. Everyone works at home, which sometimes leads to special moments. Joyce’s cat for example regularly disturbs the meeting. The meetings with all stakeholders not only ensure good contact with the other parties we deal with as Asset | Accounting & Finance, but you also get to know everyone personally and build up nice relationships. Wednesday (day at the boardroom) 08.00h: Today we can go to the rooms again. To get the most out of the rare boardroom days, I always make sure I’m there at half-past eight. Unfortunately, many A&F boardies beat me in terms of who is there first. 09.30h: This morning I have a meeting with Peter de Goeij, the Academic Director of the Finance Department, and again Joyce joins me. We discuss the usual things and the next edition of the Banking Days. Together with Myron, I am already working hard on the next edition. Thanks to the discussions with Peter and Joyce, I have started to see more and more which Master’s I would like to do. We discuss not only business things, but also often personal things like the weekend, corona and of course my choice of study. At the beginning of the year, I wanted to do the MSc. Accountancy, but this year has changed and I decided that I want to do the MSc. Finance. “As chairman, I am mainly responsible for the contact with the university. We help each other and spar on various topics such as education, student development and our formal events”. 10.30h – 17.00h: The rest of the day I am busy with smaller tasks and meetings. I discuss with other treasurers the tax rules and I am busy with the organization of the Tilburg Investment Battle in collaboration with my committee A&F Investments. Furthermore, I am preparing the collection of Asset’s membership fees and I have a meeting to discuss Asset’s business model. As a final part of the day, I have an Active Members meeting. During these individual meetings, you get to know the members and discuss how they are doing, both on a personal level and on a committee level, and discuss their coordinator, being another board member. In this way, as chairman, you learn a lot about your own board members and you can guide them. The development of the board is one of the most important and beautiful tasks as chairman. You see your board members grow enormously in six months’ time, and that gives me great satisfaction. Therefore, I dare say that I am proud of my board. 18.00h: In the evening I have dinner and a
A board year as Treasurer of Asset | Accounting & Finance – Ella Boerkamp
For the Dutch version, click here As Treasurer, you are responsible for the finances of Asset | Accounting & Finance. In addition, you coordinate the Activities, CityTrip, and Investment Night Committee. In this article, I describe my experiences as Treasurer of Asset | Accounting & Finance. Why did I choose to do a board year at Asset | Accounting & Finance? During the first three years of my student life, I wanted to get my credits as quickly as possible. After three years, I obtained my bachelor’s degree and started with the Master Accountancy. I realized that after one year I would probably be finished with studying and therefore also with my student life. This made me doubt. After all, I was only 21 years old. Then I started thinking and came to the conclusion that I wanted to do something else. Therefore, I started to find out how I could prolong my student life a bit and meanwhile gain experience within my interests. As of my third year of study, I have been an active member of Asset | Accounting & Finance and I always had a good time. For me, that was the main reason that I applied for a board year. I wanted a fun and above all enjoyable year. A board year at A&F was therefore the perfect choice. After all, I already knew most of the members, completed the Master Accountancy and I could come into contact with a variety of companies. “What do you do all day?” That is a question I often receive from many friends. Actually, it is difficult to explain what you do all day to people who have not done a board year. When I started my board year, I knew it would be a busy year with many responsibilities, but what it would look exactly was also not clear to me. On Monday morning, we always have our board meeting. When I saw the agenda for the first time, I was flabbergasted. The agenda contained a lot of different topics, such as our formal and informal events, articles that need to be written for Faces-Online, acquisition, etc. As a board member, you are doing a lot of different things, because everything needs to be well-organized and nothing should be forgotten. In short, besides having drinks with fellow students, you have a lot of responsibilities as a board member. At the moment of writing this article, I am thinking again: “What did I actually do last week? The week always flies by!” Is the position of Treasurer exactly what I expected? Before I started my board year as Treasurer, I expected to be busy with the bookkeeping of A&F: paying invoices and declarations, requesting quotes, keeping track of the budget, and sending out invoices. In the first few weeks, I was indeed very busy with this. Twinfield, our accounting software, was not really my best friend at the time and it took me a while to understand and work efficiently with the system. Every week, I mean every day, I contacted my predecessor with questions about Twinfield. After a while, I became more and more proficient and I started to understand what my predecessor meant by ‘Twinfield is just like gaming’. “That as a board member of A&F, you are working in a mini-company with 120 employees and you will never get these responsibilities at your first job.” In contrast to the beginning of my board year, I am currently spending much more time coordinating my three committees. This results in variety in my work. The Activities Committee organizes various events for active members so that they can get to know fellow students despite the few physical contacts that are currently possible. I also coordinate the Investment Night Committee. Investment Night is a symposium that will take place on May 12. Organizing this is a very fun and exciting challenge. Furthermore, I am the coordinator of the CityTrip Committee. I am very happy with this, because last year, I was a member of the StudyTour Committee that organized the trip to South Korea. Even though traveling is not possible at the moment, we still organize fun activities! Besides coordinating my committees, I am also busy with helping other board members, the weekly meetings of all Treasurers of Asset, the quarterly Audit of Accounts, the bookkeeping of the Alumni Association Financials, and the Financial Association Netherlands (FAN). What are you most proud of? I am proud of the fact that, with all the board members, active members, and partners, we have made it an inspiring and instructive year so far. As a board member in this crazy period, we have to make sure that we keep all our partners and members happy. We ensure that events continue and that requires us to be proactive and creative in finding solutions. Hence, our problem-solving skills were highly demanded this year. I am also happy about and proud of the fact that all our events have taken place this year, despite the various Covid-19 restrictions. As a result, fellow students still had the opportunity to develop themselves and get to know other students. Would I recommend a board year to others, even in these strange times? Definitely! When I started my board year in the summer of 2020, I knew that my board year would be different from a ‘normal’ board year. Nevertheless, it has been a fantastic period so far! My board year cannot be compared to any other board year. I hope, of course, that this unique board year will not become normal. During this year, we had to do the best we could to remain successful as a study association. Every event needs to have a plan b and c, which are usually a physical plan and one or two online plans because the rules are constantly changing. For this reason, we are constantly searching for the best option. Looking back at what I have learned, I dare to say