ALUMNI NOTES ALUMNI SUCCESS
After the Storm: Linus Akanoh Jr. ’06 He became a manager in 2012, leading teams as small as four and as large as 60. “There are very few typical days,” he says, “because the world we live in is volatile and always changing. Tomorrow is a different reality.” Akanoh knows that firsthand. As a 16-year-old from Lagos, Nigeria, he found himself in a completely new reality when he arrived on the hilltop to begin his freshman year. His parents, Nigerian natives who met studying in Germany, had always aspired for their six children to attend college abroad. (Three are now in the United States, two in the United Kingdom, and one in Denmark.) His uncle, Albert Akano ’87, also attended St. Edward’s.
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“I had visited the United States before [attending St. Edward’s] and always had an affinity for it — its boundless opportunities and promises,” he says. “You can become whoever and whatever you want.”
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When torrential rains hit large swaths of the Gulf Coast in 2012, it was like an underwater ghost town. Linus Akanoh Jr. ’06 arrived shortly after the floods to help state agencies that were his clients at Deloitte, a national consulting firm where he is an advisory manager in the Strategic Risk practice. He and his team helped coordinate efforts to disburse federal relief funds and develop and implement processes to manage the recovery program. “The accompanying floods resulted in significant financial and operational discomfort,” he says. It took much, much longer than the two to three weeks the disaster stayed in the headlines. “The magnitude of the recovery, which takes months, even years, is extraordinary,” he says. “Going back now and seeing businesses finally reopening and children returning to their new schools, it feels like we played a part in that.” Akanoh has been part of teams at crisis sites in Colorado, Louisiana, Georgia and Arizona since he joined Deloitte in 2007 after finishing his master’s in Professional Accounting at University of Texas–Austin.
And he did. He studied in the dual-degree Accounting Information Technology program, earning a BBA in Accounting and BA in Computer Information Technology. He conducted fraud detection research under Professor of Accounting Mike Harris, presented on campus and at the Texas Academy of Science, and won a state ethics competition. These days, he is an adjunct instructor in The Bill Munday School of Business. “My professors really invested in me. They cared about my learning, and they were always challenging me. They told me, ‘You can do this, and here’s why’,” he says. “I try to honor their legacy by teaching as they did — taking the theoretical and making it experiential.” Plus, he says, “I am absolutely convinced that St. Edward’s University is a world-class institution. It may not be as big as some of the universities in the area, but it’s big in the right places — great people, close community, hands-on instruction and a focus on service,” he says. “And the best part is, none of that is a one-time thing. It’s part of who we are; it’s in our DNA.” —Stacia Hernstrom MLA ’05