Her Story
About Denise
My career started 36 years ago when I graduated from law school and began working at a bank doing tax work. I spent most of my career in-house at various financial institutions before joining Deloitte, where I've been the global leader for the information reporting practice for 16 years. I specialize in information reporting and tax transparency, consulting on the rules that govern the passing of information to the Internal Revenue Service and other regulators so they can ensure people are appropriately disclosing their income and paying their taxes. My background at financial institutions gave me a strong understanding of operations and technology, and how different institutions operationalize these requirements. Every day is different for me - I spend a lot of time on phone calls with both internal teams and clients, and I travel extensively both domestically and internationally. Because of time zone differences, I often start early in the morning on calls and sometimes work late at night. The biggest challenge in my role is coordination - making sure everything is properly coordinated across Deloitte's large organization with many member firms and clients, ensuring teams are focused on what they need to be, and keeping our clients informed about important changes in regulations and laws. Six years ago, I went back to school to get my LLM in tax from Villanova, something I had wanted to do when I was younger but life took over with having a family. Now I also teach at Villanova, which I've been doing for 3 years. I'm well known in my area of expertise.
Her Interview
Ten minutes with Denise
01What do you attribute your success to?
It's hard to say exactly what I attribute my success to. I've been dedicated to this area and focused on it throughout my career. I grew up in a family where my parents taught us that we could be successful at anything we tried, and that foundation has stayed with me. I've remained committed to my field of information reporting and tax transparency for 36 years, building deep expertise and relationships along the way.
02What’s the best career advice you’ve ever received?
The best career advice I ever received, which I didn't get until I was farther along in my career, was to make sure that you own your own career, because nobody else is going to take care of it for you. You have to set your own goals, know what you want, and go for that, because you're the only one that can do that. There's not another person out there that necessarily knows you and is looking out for you, so you have to be your own advocate and take charge of your career path.
03What advice would you give to young women entering your industry?
I'm at the point in my career now where I'm looking back on it, and I have a lot of young females that work for me. I always tell them that while your career is important - and don't get me wrong, I've been very successful in my career - they need to put their families first as well. The career is important, but I think your family is probably more important. I remember once somebody telling me when I was traveling a lot and putting in crazy hours that I was basically killing myself, and that if I was gone, the company I worked for would continue to go on, but my family probably wouldn't. That's always stuck with me. So I tell a lot of the younger females that it's important to make sure they are taking time for themselves and taking time for their families, because those are things you can't necessarily get back. A career is important, but it's not the most important thing.
04What are the biggest challenges or opportunities in your field right now?
The biggest challenge in my field right now is probably coordination. Deloitte is a big organization with a lot of member firms and different clients, so just making sure that everything is properly coordinated is crucial. I need to ensure that the teams are focused on what they're supposed to be focused on, and that our clients are being informed about important changes in the regulations and the laws. It really comes down to coordination across a complex global organization.
05What values are most important to you in your work and personal life?
My values have probably changed over time. From a work standpoint, I think making sure that I am responsible, responsive, and provide quality is important. But in terms of true value at the end of the day, I go back to my family - my kids and my grandchildren. I realize that that's your legacy at the end of the day. As I'm getting closer to retiring, I've realized that your job isn't everything. There's going to be a point in time when you leave that job, whether you're changing jobs or retiring, and you can't make your job your whole life because it's just not. So I put a lot of value on my family, spending time with them, making time with them, and doing things together. We do a lot of family trips because I think those kinds of things are important and create lasting memories.
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