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"I'm proud of it," he said. "It certainly was an interesting time in my career. One of the biggest corporate downfalls in one of the shortest periods of time in history."
After the Big Six firm imploded in the aftermath of the Enron scandal, Whittington was hired last June as vice president of finance and accounting for Alltel Corp. Now, instead of supervising five or six other accountants, he manages 160.
"I'm in charge of a little bit of everything - property and equipment, inventory, commissions, cash processing operations. When you send a check to Alltel, as do 12 million customers, that is my responsibility," he said.
Telecommunications is so different from public accounting, and Whittington has faced such challenges that he described the past year as "a baptism by fire."
Outside the office, Whittington has been on the board of Big Brothers Big Sisters of Central Arkansas for four years, and he had been a Big Brother for two years before that.
