The Women in Accounting and Finance: Global Summit is an event that celebrates our female leaders and showcases their accomplishments in the field of accounting and finance. This year, though virtual, was a great opportunity to hear the unique and empowering stories of the panelists from around the globe.
As the world begins to transition back to business as usual, it is more important than ever to provide forums, such as the Women in Accounting and Finance events to serve as inspiration to current students and young alums in amplifying the importance of female leadership and perspectives in business. The 2021 Global Summit event for the Women in Accounting & Finance panel discussion brought together three School of Accounting and Finance (SAF) alums to share their career stories and answer questions from event attendees.
Julia Klann (MAcc ’05) is one of the lucky few who knew exactly what they wanted to do after graduating from university. From her co-op experience at Big 4 accounting firms, she developed an affinity for working in tax early on – Canadian tax that is. It was when she was searching for her final co-op work term that she came across a role focused on U.S. tax – a realm she wasn’t as familiar with. She made the leap, and from that moment on fell in love with U.S. tax and never looked back.
Recently the School of Accounting and Finance (SAF) was pleased to be notified that one of its former faculty members, Sally Gunz (MA, LLB Sydney, MBA Manchester), Professor Emerita (1981-2019), was made an Honorary Member of the University. Now retired, we caught up with Gunz to talk about her career and the contributions she has made to SAF.
For Carol Leaman (MAcc ’89, CPA), the solid foundation in accounting from the University of Waterloo led her toward a winding, yet interesting and life changing career path of founding early-stage technology companies and leading them through to acquisition…four times over. From the wild rides of founding to the sale of the tech companies she’s led, Leaman has remained humble with the firm belief of creating an environment and culture that empowers everyone with knowledge, transparency, and honesty. Her latest start-up, Axonify, is a demonstration of Leaman exemplifying these qualities through her leadership which has translated into multiple years of recognition for Axonify as one of the best workplaces in Canada. Axonify was acquired last April by an American private equity firm to which Leaman has remained in the leadership role to take her passion project to the next stage of growth.
Su-Yin Tan is the first to acknowledge that the sudden shift to online learning during the pandemic was hard on teachers and students. So, when public health restrictions lift, Tan doesn’t want to lose all the valuable lessons learned.
Tan, a teaching fellow in the Faculty of Environment, is supporting a new Blended Learning Initiative at the University of Waterloo. “The pandemic forced me to try different things and to think differently about all of my assignments,” says Tan. “I do see advantages to offering some activities online and was surprised to get good feedback from students.”
Globally, 2020 has been a year of unanticipated decision-making as organizations pivoted to ensure business success, often with very tight timelines. With the common theme of the global pandemic as the driving force of these strategies, the School of Accounting and Finance leveraged its annual Women In Accounting and Finance event to invite five SAF alumni from across the globe to share their stories and insights in managing and pivoting their teams, organizations, and personal lives through the global pandemic.
As the world slowly transitions back to in-person office environments, the newly appointed Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer for Sun Life, Manjit Singh, (BA ’93, CPA, CFA), is excited to implement digital and people focused strategies to lead Sun Life beyond the global pandemic. The School of Accounting and Finance (SAF) caught up with the Waterloo alum to learn more about his career and where he sees the future of the financial services industry.
‘Using a combination of speech recognition technologies and natural language processing technology, it’s able to communicate with the guests regardless of dialect, accent or what their order is.’
Globalization of businesses and increased public interest from consumers and investors have meant that organizations are demonstrating how their companies are governed responsibly and doing good for the environment and society. Additionally, employers today are expecting more from their employees than just technical skills. Business leaders are wanting professionals who have the judgement, collaborative, and team skills backed with ethics and integrity to navigate and harness the power of big data to drive business solutions and decisions.