Professor McDermott teaches financial reporting and sustainability courses at the undergraduate and graduate levels. With a teaching philosophy centered on kindness, she strives to foster a classroom environment of belonging and is passionate about helping her students to develop into compassionate, emotionally intelligent leaders. Her research, which has been published in Management Science, focuses on the application of accounting standards, the quality of the resulting accounting information, and how that information is used in decisions.

Professor McDermott was a faculty member at Georgetown University before joining the McIntire School. At Georgetown University, she taught financial reporting courses at the undergraduate, evening MBA, and full-time MBA levels. Before pursuing her doctoral studies at The University of North Carolina, Professor McDermott worked as a Senior Auditor for PricewaterhouseCoopers in Chicago. She is a registered CPA in Illinois and is a recipient of the Elijah Watt Sells Award.