She grew up in Southern California and graduated from Cal Poly with a Bachelor of Science degree in accounting in 2000. She worked for Ernst & Young in San Jose, Calif. as an audit senior. Dr. Westermann subsequently relocated to New York City, taking a job with PricewaterhouseCoopers, ending her career in public accounting as a full time instructor in PwC’s Learning and Education division. In 2006, she entered the inaugural cohort of the Bentley University Ph.D. program and was selected as the Henry E. Rauch Doctoral Fellow recipient. She has also been awarded the PwC INQuires Grant for proposals in 2007 and 2008. In 2009, Dr. Westermann was a visiting scholar and lecturer at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia. After graduating in 2011, she spent four years as an assistant professor in Miami at Florida International University.