Fall / Winter 2025 | Texas Leader

Proud alumnus Rohan Small has a sense of responsibility to UT and its students.

“In some organizations, you feel like you are just a number,” says Rohan Small, shown here with McCombs Dean Lillian Mills (center) and Brittany Small. “What we have at UT — a family feeling and a close connection — is special.”

Rohan Small, B.A. and BBA ’91, grew up in the Cayman Islands, about 450 miles south of Florida. As the eldest of four boys, he was sometimes left in charge of his younger siblings. On those occasions, his mother had a hard rule: If she returned home to discover something had gone wrong in the household, it would be Rohan’s fault. “It was a very effective system,” Rohan recalls with a laugh, “because I had to make sure my brothers behaved.”
 
If that’s how Rohan learned about responsibility and taking care of others, the lesson is of great benefit to Longhorns in the McCombs School of Business. With his wife, Rohan has created the Rohan and Brittany Small Endowed Excellence Fund for Student Success in Business within the McCombs Success Scholars program. Their goal? To help business students focus on their studies and take advantage of the multitude of learning opportunities UT has to offer.

Rohan was born with a drive to succeed. Once he set his sights on earning a degree in accounting, he researched the best place for him to get an education. In 1986 — and still to this day — UT ranked #1 in undergraduate accounting programs in the U.S.
 
With a scholarship from a Cayman financial institution to help finance his dream, Rohan left his Caribbean home determined to make the most of his time on the Forty Acres.
 
“I came from a small island, and UT was the world to me,” he says. “It was an eye-opener in terms of all the offerings there, and the idea was to take advantage of it all. There was no way I was going to come to the school for four years and limit myself.”
 
While earning degrees in accounting and computer science, he immersed himself in the culture of Texas — football, food and music — and took on a role of ambassador for his home nation to help his fellow Longhorns learn a little bit about the world. In his second year on the Forty Acres, he co-founded the Caribbean Students Association and later served as its second president.
 
“Even though we embraced the Texan culture, we kept our own culture — that was our grounding, and we didn’t want to lose that,” he says. “Texas opened our eyes, which made us better people, and we hopefully opened students’ eyes about the Caribbean. It was a win-win situation.”

As a partner at Ernst & Young (EY), Rohan divides his time between his homes in the Cayman Islands and Florida. Knowing how he got to where he is in life inspires him to give back to the University that made it all possible, and his wife Brittany is on board with the plan.
 
“Rohan is so invested in people,” says Brittany, “and UT helped him take that to the next level and succeed in the financial world. We want to help students cultivate their personal skills so they too can achieve success.”

“We wanted to give back to a program that wasn’t well funded,” says Rohan. “Dean Mills introduced us to about 20 students in McCombs Success Scholars who had sharp ability but might have lacked some of the financial means. Their passion was seriously evident.”
 
With lasting fond memories of his time at UT, Rohan continues his connection to the Forty Acres with a deep understanding of the impact the University made on his life and his responsibility to carry forward the lessons he learned.
 
“Being at UT dovetailed nicely into my 33-year career at EY, where our purpose is to ‘build a better working world.’ As a proud Longhorn, I tell people wherever I go that ‘what starts here changes the world’ is absolutely true. UT is where I started, and now Brittany and I are changing the world.”