Jessica Purnell ’18: Ambition Means Staying True to Your Values

For Jessica Purnell '18, a career in finance and accounting adds up to far more than number crunching. As a senior manager in finance at Edwards Lifesciences, a leading global structural heart innovation company providing solutions for people fighting cardiovascular disease, she plays a hidden yet influential role in supporting patients.

Given that she's still early in her career, the seniority of her position might suggest she's something of a prodigy; however, she credits her work ethic to a simple principle she learned as an undergraduate at the LMU College of Business Administration (CBA): believe in what you do.

"I feel truly lucky to have discovered a career track where work doesn't feel like work," Purnell reflected. "At LMU, I was taught that education isn't just about cultivating the mind - it's also about physical and spiritual development, strengthening a personal understanding of our values, and what it might mean to engage in service and use our talents for good."

Upon graduating, it was clear to Purnell that she wanted to work for a company whose mission she believed in and where she could embody her values every day. As it happens, she discovered Edwards Lifesciences via an LMU alumna who was looking to recruit CBA graduates.

"That gave me a sense of the importance of the alumni network at LMU," said Purnell. "There's a reason so many of us stay engaged - for us, LMU felt like home. I would encourage students to take advantage of the knowledge base and opportunities offered by alumni. There's a whole pack behind you who really want to help."

Purnell regularly returns to campus to attend career panels and networking events; she also delivers presentations in class settings and helps students with professional development through LMU's Finance Targeted Advisory Council. "Returning to CBA as an alumnus feels as though I've never left," she said. "LMU has given me so much. It's important to me to give back in as many ways as I can."

Although she may be considered at an early stage of her career, Purnell's pace of professional advancement has been highly unusual - especially for a woman, who are underrepresented in finance and accounting fields.

"I've always loved the math of accounting," she said, "but it's really the language of business that has given me access to rooms where I wouldn't have been otherwise. For me, the fun part is the strategy - how we partner with the business to finance what they want to do."

Purnell isn't afraid to share her perspective in high-stakes meetings, and her confidence comes in part from the support she received from her professors at CBA.

"When I was unsure about what I wanted to do after LMU, several of my professors took the time to sit down with me and identify the pros and cons of different companies and career paths," she recalled. "Later on, when I did my CPA a couple of years after graduating, one of my tax professors scheduled a call with me on a Saturday to talk through the process. It's that type of commitment that is so unique to LMU."

Purnell's professors also helped her to get involved in activities and courses that allowed her to leverage her outgoing nature, recognizing that being a "people person" is comparatively rare in accountancy. As a result, she's managed to combine a knack for numbers with an emotionally intelligent approach to making her ideas heard. Essentially, CBA was her public speaking and strategy sandbox.

"College is the place where you can experiment with as many new roles and skills as you like," she said. "If I have one piece of advice for students, it's to raise your hand, even if you're uncertain, just throw yourself at an activity or new responsibility and see how you figure things out. That mentality typically leads to faster growth in your career, and it's just so much more personally rewarding."

Purnell finds mentoring equally gratifying. She encourages students not to expect opportunities to come to them - they need to be the ones in the driving seat. There's also something spiritually and emotionally sustaining in her role at Edwards Lifesciences, which gives her the sense of purpose she set out to achieve when she graduated from LMU.

"We have an initiative at the company that involves partnering with a patient and their caregiver to learn about their experiences," she explained. "I had the chance to hear directly from someone who had benefited from our heart valve technology. I witnessed their struggle, fears, and empowerment. It gave me a deep conviction of the empowerment each one of us can achieve in our own lives."

To learn more about supporting LMU College of Business Administration, contact Jonathan Adrias, senior director of development, at [email protected] or 310.338.7856. You can also directly support LMU CBA here.