Turning financial insight into environmental impact at PwC Canada
What happens when finance meets sustainability?
Harrison Cormier (he/him), a third-year Sustainability and Financial Management student, highlights how real-world experiences at PwC Canada reinforced his classroom learning and showcased the value of interdisciplinary collaboration.
Returning to the same employer allowed for increasing responsibility, while mentoring others back at Waterloo and engaging in recruitment efforts added meaning to his academic and professional path.
Harrison's co-op journey
Work term one and two: For his first two work terms, Harrison was employed at PwC Canada out of their Vancouver office as a risk services, sustainability, reporting and assurance associate. Harrison was on the chartered professional accountant (CPA) track, meaning that all that time he spent working there was going towards his hours to complete the professional accounting designation. Harrison’s tasks included providing verification over sustainability reports that a client company was publishing, to ensure that everything was done in a clear way.
Q&A with Harrison
What have you learned about sustainability and finance from being on co-op?
“The cool thing about my program and this type of job is that a lot of the people that I worked for had an underlying role in the creation of my program. I was part of the first group of students to be in this program. It was an excellent match. The program was essentially made to fulfill that kind of role. In terms of what I learned, it was a lot of reinforcing the same things I learned in school.”
“The big learning for me was how to work with other people who were from different backgrounds in terms of their education. I would work regularly with engineers, accountants and people that didn't have a degree in sustainability. People who were really dialed in on their area of study. I got to learn from them every day and I think for me the big learning for sustainability was seeing how all those different people interact and how my degree can be used in different capacities.”
“I was auditing a company and the two of the more involved corresponding co-ops in that company were both from Waterloo and one was in my program directly. It was great to see how Waterloo co-op was applied through different angles. It gave me a better understanding of how many people it takes to make it all work and how crazy complex it is.”
“You couldn't have 100 people from my degree do it all. In the same way you couldn't have 100 engineers or 100 biologists or 100 ecologists do it. It took a mix of people to make it all work.”
“There's a huge number of Waterloo alumni at PwC Canada, even in Vancouver. There was a good alumni group from Waterloo within the company through all management levels. You were never that far away from somebody with a strong Waterloo connection. I got a lot of great advice and support from those alumni all the way through my co-op terms.”
What's the most interesting thing you've done on a co-op term?
“A lot of it would have to do with the problems I was able to contribute to solving and the number of different hats I got to put on. We would go from looking at how water accounting is done or how best to measure land use in communities, to diversity, to all those different parts of sustainability.”
“I think for me, being able to go from one area to another and solve those problems along the way and contribute to those being solved. Getting to see the people above me do it well too and follow their example is definitely a highlight. We had the global sustainability leader visit Vancouver. It was great to meet somebody who is brushing elbows with CEOs and prime ministers and presidents regularly.”
“One of the best parts about that employer was how open everyone was to collaborate. You can walk around and grab people as you need to solve the problem. Even as a co-op, if I needed someone’s help I felt comfortable enough to ask.”
How have you found returning to the same employer for your co-op experiences?
“Part of the nature of that employer is that they work with a bunch of different companies. There was a really wide range of opportunities that they were able to offer. They were also able to offer a lot of increasingly difficult tasks and increase their trust in me. I think that's definitely why I kept coming back and will continue to keep going back.”
“I think for me that was the big offer there. Had I not been offered all those opportunities and the chance to vary who I was working with and what companies I was working with, then it wouldn't have been nearly as attractive an opportunity.”
How do you stand out from other students when you apply for co-op jobs?
“I think the thing that helped me was doubling down on my interests and obviously being open to new opportunities but being clear that you have a passion. I grew up in a lot of communities that had natural resources as the primary industry. It was a very clear passion for me and I was able to focus on that while doing things outside of that to get a broader context to support my passion.”
“I think doubling down allowed me to gain expertise over time and, as a co-op, be able to have opinions on things that were warranted to some extent. You can always have an opinion, but it takes a lot to have an opinion that actually merits consideration compared to people that have been doing it for 20 or 30 years.”
“I think if I was jumping around too much then it would have been harder to pick up enough knowledge to have an opinion. I think focusing on things that I was passionate about and legitimately enjoyed allowed me to speak better in interviews. That led me to do better work and to communicate with more consistency, clarity and relevance to what people were actually doing.”
What sparked your passion for sustainability?
“Being able to see it done well and being able to see it done badly. I saw this program as a good marriage between science and ecology and accounting. There's a lot of sustainability problems that don't make sense from a monetary or sustainability perspective; they just shouldn't be an issue.”
“Being able to make arguments from both sides as an accountant and somebody with a lot of experience in industrial ecology through my undergrad, that's a rare combination. It's a combination that allows you to speak multiple languages. That was helpful and seeing that sustainability offered that opportunity compared to going down a pure accounting pathway or a pure biology pathway, that was a plus for me.”
Tell me more about the presentations you’ve been part of!
“COP 16 was the Conference of the Parties on Biological Diversity in Cali, Colombia, which was organized by the United Nations. I was able to go as someone who is affiliated with the Cambridge Institute of Sustainable Finance in the United Kingdom. That was a great experience because not only is Columbia beautiful, but I got to see a lot of the protocols, rules and standards that I worked on were renegotiated or improved. I got to meet an even broader perspective of people from the United Nations, other universities and civil society.”
“That was very helpful for me because when I went back to my co-op, I had a very different perspective. I was able to speak from the perspective of someone who was there when some of this stuff was written or planned and who participated in the conversations around that.”
“I've helped the School of Accounting and Finance with recruitment for a long time as a student. I also help PwC Canada as a campus ambassador with recruitment for other co-ops across Canada. I am able to bring a good perspective as I was their first co-op student from this program.”
“Through both of those, you're able to make both the argument for studying and working in sustainability and accounting at the same time. Which is helpful for me as a co-op student because it makes it very easy to understand why you're doing it when you have to explain things to others. It certainly makes all of the hard hours studying or working much more impactful because you're able to explain it to other people.”
“Over time, I’ve watched dozens of students who I've encouraged to go into the program come through and now be first- and second-year students. They offer a whole new set of experiences, so that's been very nice and certainly fulfilling as I get to the latter half of my degree.”
What’s next for you?
“I have two co-op terms left, it’s an 8-month co-op. I’ll do the second half of that with PwC and then look for another place to do it in the fall term. That was encouraged by both my professors and the firm to have a really broad level of experience. That’s the next calendar year.”
“Otherwise, participating in a lot of classes and trying to pick up as much as I can for the rest of my degree and putting the cherry on the top in the best way possible. I think there's a lot of interesting masters opportunities out there. I would definitely like to do something at the graduate level.”
