![\"Melisa\"](\"https:\/\/www.umw.edu\/greatminds\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/20\/2015\/10\/Melisa_HP.jpg\")
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A first-generation college student, she\u2019s banking on Mary Washington \u2013 and her love of accounting \u2013 to do just that.<\/p>\n
From the start, Pilipovic was all about business. While her classmates crunched cereal before school, she crunched numbers. She\u2019d opened a savings account by kindergarten; taught herself QuickBooks by 13. Now majoring in business administration and accounting \u2013 offered for the first time at UMW this fall \u2013 she plans to cash in on a dynamic career, pushing her family\u2019s sparse U.S. start even further into the past.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s something about accounting that just makes sense,\u201d she said. \u201cI could sit down and do it forever. I love to open the book.\u201d<\/p>\n
From the Bosnian town of Velika Kladu\u0161a, the family settled in Waynesboro, Virginia, where Pilipovic grew up learning Serbo-Croation from her parents, English from her teachers. In governor\u2019s school, she tackled subjects like physics and molecular biology. But it was numbers \u2013 always numbers \u2013 that made her mind race.<\/p>\n
When she enrolled, UMW offered neither finance nor accounting as majors, but she\u2019d fallen in love with its not-too-big feel and the College of Business.<\/p>\n
\u201cI appreciated the program and what it could offer,\u201d said Pilipovic, who plunged in, joining upper-level accounting courses; marketing, ambassador and mentorship programs; \u201ceverything I could possibly do.\u201d<\/p>\n
To get through that first year, she\u2019d turn for support to Assistant Accounting Professor Dave Henderson \u201995, who also fed her passion for travel. She\u2019s studied abroad in Costa Rica, London and France, and in the U.K. on a trip led by Henderson.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe\u2019s engaged with faculty. She\u2019s made connections,\u201d said College of Business Dean Lynne Richardson, who appointed Pilipovic an inaugural student member of Mary Washington\u2019s Leadership Colloquium Advisory Board. \u201cShe\u2019s taken advantage of everything this campus has to offer.\u201d<\/p>\n
UMW\u2019s liberal arts and sciences have even opened her mind to topics like French cinema and meditation.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m not just this nerdy accounting person,\u201d said Pilipovic, who worked last winter at Liberty Tax Service and helps run her parents\u2019 trucking businesses.<\/p>\n
An only child, she\u2019s gained something else at Mary Washington. Her roommates, she said, are \u201cthe sisters I never had.\u201d Most nights she makes them all dinner \u2013 spaghetti, maybe, or chicken and rice.<\/p>\n
When she\u2019s not in the kitchen, she might be online, re-tweeting stories from professional equality advocates like Lean In, working to boost all<\/em> women in business.<\/p>\n \u201cAs women, we tend to judge, put up walls,\u201d she said. \u201cYou have to put those down. Our accomplishments fall under one umbrella.\u201d<\/p>\n She turns to social media, too, to share Mary Washington victories, both athletic and academic.<\/p>\n \u201cI appreciate how much we\u2019ve grown and accomplished,\u201d said Pilipovic, who plans to stay on in the MBA program. \u201cI want to make sure people know I go to UMW.\u201d<\/p>\n