This UTS Accounting student is turning opportunity into achievement

“In high school, I was never top of the class. I didn’t have the best marks out there, but I liked to put my hand up for everything,” she says.  

“I just love being involved in stuff.” 

The way Liv tells it, that have-a-go attitude has been a big part of her success to date. It landed her a place in the UTS Bachelor of Accounting co-operative scholarship program, which connects high-achieving students to funding support and internship opportunities, and on the AFR Top 100 Future Leaders list for 2025. 

In 2026, it saw her named a 7NEWS Young Achiever Award semi-finalist and a recipient of the prestigious Leah Armstrong Scholarship. The scholarship provides up to $60,000 for talented female First Nations students whose leadership potential and university studies support First Nations economic empowerment.

“With my heritage, I’ve always wanted to use my skills to benefit my community,” says Liv.

“My goal is to build a really detailed skillset across a range of business areas. In the future, when I have the knowledge and financial means, I want to give that expertise back to Indigenous students and businesses.”

From an accounting degree to a consulting career

For the past three years, UTS has been supporting Liv to develop that skillset through a combination of in-class, industry and extracurricular learning experiences.

As part of the Cooperative Scholarship Program, she’s completed internships with leading organisations like Lendlease and Allianz, learning the inner workings of a range of business disciplines like business and financial analytics and financial planning. 

In the UTS Case Team, a student-led consulting program within the UTS Business School, Liv has competed at national and international business case competitions. These events pit teams of students against each other to devise solutions to real-world challenges set by industry. 

To date, she’s travelled the Netherlands, New Zealand, Canada, Spain and Hungary as a Case Team member, going head-to-head with some of the world’s top universities. The UTS team won the 2024 Central European Case Competition in Budapest.

“You get to meet a bunch of like-minded students from around the world, you get to talk to C-Suite executives and hear their feedback on your ideas,” Liv says.

“It has definitely been the highlight of my UTS experience.”

As well as building her social and professional networks, these opportunities have helped Liv understand where she wants to take her career. From early in her degree, she knew she didn’t want to pursue a pure accounting trajectory. UTS showed her that her skills, and the Bachelor of Accounting program, could take her down a different path.

“I want to go into consulting. I’ve realised I’m more of a people-facing, problem-solving sort of person,” says Liv, who also completed a sub-major in Management Consulting. 

“I love the basis of accounting, and I love knowing about how it can help you understand business as a whole. That knowledge will give me a strong foundation for a consulting career.”

Unlocking diversity in business and finance courses

Even as Liv builds towards that future, she’s not doing it alone. At UTS, the Jumbunna Institute for Higher Education and Research and the First Nation Students Society have kept her connected with Indigenous education, social and cultural support throughout her time on campus.

These programs acknowledge the different life paths that First Nations students travel to university and put the supports in place to keep them working towards their goals. “Being a First Nations student usually comes with more family responsibility, community responsibility and cultural responsibility, so just knowing that’s there and that other students are having the same experience as you is very affirming,” Liv says.

“You always know that if you're ever stuck, there's a whole network behind you.”

That support got Liv thinking about offering a similar lifeline to First Nations and other diverse business students who are competing for space in industry where opportunities are often hard won. 

In her third year, she was appointed President of Case Team, which felt like the opportunity she’d been looking for. Case Team had always positioned itself as an exclusive group, but it tended to favour students who’d followed similar academic trajectories.

Liv decided to throw the doors wide open.

“Now, when we run trials, we don’t look for who does the best presentation. We look for who’s going to put in the work, who has the most potential and who has the most positive attitude,” she says.  

“We’ve just had our biggest ever intake this year, and it’s been students from the most diverse backgrounds, diverse degrees, diverse ideas. Having people that are different and can think about a problem from all different angles has always been what I’ve really wanted to see Case Team become.”

Liv Coxsedge is counting herself in 

Now at the end of her studies, Liv recently secured a highly competitive graduate role as an associate consultant at a commercial strategy and private equity firm. She spent eight months preparing for what she calls “the most intense interview of my life.”  

But she did it anyway. Because if Liv Coxsedge knows anything, it’s that putting yourself in the race is the only way to win it.  

It’s a message she wants other accounting and business students to hear, particularly those from First Nations and other diverse backgrounds who might second guess what they have to offer.  

“Just go for it, even if you don’t think you’re the ideal candidate,” she says. 

“There is no ideal candidate. Judging panels look for people who are enthusiastic and want to be part of something bigger than themselves.”