As the new President of Chartered Accountants Ireland, Sinead Donovan is intent on showcasing a vibrant profession to ‘Next Gen’ members As she prepares for the year ahead as President of Chartered Accountants Ireland, Sinead Donovan’s key objective will be positioning the profession to attract the next generation. Her appointment to the role at the Institute’s AGM on Friday, 19 May, was a source of deep and genuine pride for Donovan, whose late father Cecil Donovan took on the same role in 1986. “It means a huge amount to me personally because of my father’s legacy and, professionally, I see it as the pinnacle of my career so far,” says Donovan.  “I’ve wanted to get here for a long time, because it matters enormously to me to be able to emulate my father, whom I admired so much, and to represent the profession I love.”  In the year ahead, Donovan says she will give “every possible effort” to representing all members of Chartered Accountants Ireland on the island of Ireland and overseas.  “The way I look at it, this role is about passing on the baton for the benefit of our members and the wider profession now and into the future,” she says. “My father passed the baton to me and being a Chartered Accountant has always felt to me like being part of a family that is unique in how we support each other. “So, my job is to pass the baton to the next generation – to show them what this profession is really about, and all that it can offer – and bring them into the family of accountants in which I have been able to build a fulfilling career that I love.” Donovan’s career has brought her to the pinnacle of the profession, as Chair of Grant Thornton Ireland and a Partner in the firm’s Financial Accounting and Advisory Services practice. “There has been a lot of variety in my career and a lot of opportunity. I have built some amazing relationships and worked in environments that are just really people-focused. “So, I want to get away from this idea of the ‘grey-suited accountant’ who works only with numbers. That is just not what a career as a Chartered Accountant is about.” Despite this, the perception of the profession among the Gen Z cohort (born between the mid-90s and early 2000s) now entering the workforce is not as positive as Donovan would like it to be. Gen Z research findings Recent Gen Z research carried out by Chartered Accountant Ireland, under the auspices of Chartered Accountants Worldwide, revealed a troubling ‘perception gap’ between respondents who had no experience of chartered accountancy and those who had commenced their training.  The study aimed to find out how the ACA qualification is perceived by Gen Z respondents in Ireland and worldwide. The Gen Z respondents in Ireland with no experience of chartered accountancy reported viewing the profession as challenging (56%), numbers-based (34%) and boring (19%).  They were considerably less likely than the global average to view the profession as purpose-led (2%), creative (0%), or exciting (4%).  Encouragingly, however, the Irish respondents who had begun their training were far more likely to view it as varied (up from 8% to 25%) and purpose-led. The respondents in this cohort describing it as boring halved.    “It’s clear that, once students commence their training, they get a much better sense of what the qualification is about, but for those who haven’t made the decision yet, the perception gap is pretty stark,” Donovan says.   “Irish students recorded a significant difference in perception, which shows us there is work to do. Engaging the next generation of accountants and the next generation of leaders will be front of mind for the Institute this year.” There are more routes into the profession today than ever before, but as Donovan sees it, more must be done to promote the qualification to the next generation, including changing the established and accepted ways of doing things.  “If the next generation does not buy into what we do and see itself in our profession, it will be because we are not adequately selling it to them, whether at school or third level, or in the early stages of their professional training,” she says.  “I want to ensure that students understand what ACA is and what the benefits of entering the profession are. Gone are the days of calculators and ledgers. Our focus now is on technology, data analytics, leadership skills and global developments.  “Being an Irish Chartered Accountant is respected around the globe and the qualification enables truly global travel and ability to do business. Our profession is in the middle of a recruitment and retention challenge and if we don’t step up to harness this talent pool, we are missing out.” Next Gen values and skill sets  There has been a lot of attention in public discourse about the need to ‘step up’ post-pandemic and help students and new recruits adapt to the working environment, Donovan says.  “There is also a need for us to re-examine that status quo and use this opportunity to ensure the environment is one that works for the next generation of the profession. Those at the start of their careers are seeking a greater degree of flexibility and better work-life balance and genuine diversity, equity and inclusion at work. “This idea of the ‘grey-suited accountant’ is just not it anymore. What I see in our younger members is a very vibrant cohort who will be leading business decisions into the future,” Donovan says. “They value sustainability and Chartered Accountants have an enormous role to play here in every sense – not just in terms of reporting and assurance, but also in shaping sustainability policy within companies and in advising organisations on sustainability best-practice.” Technology will also continue to play an ever-greater role in the work of the Chartered Accountant of the future, Donovan says. “Our Next Gen members will have to be at the forefront of information technology and data analytics, and in understanding the impact Artificial Intelligence is bringing to the world,” she says. “So, we need to make sure their education in these technologies is deep and comprehensive so that they are fully equipped with the skills they need to thrive in a rapidly changing world.” Next Gen education  For Donovan, education is also critically important to ensuring that the profession is “represented credibly” to the Next Gen members of Chartered Accountants Ireland.  “We’ve got to engage them in interesting methods of learning, syllabus content and topics that are actually relevant to the work of the Chartered Accountant from second level right through to third level, in their training and exam experience with the Institute and right through their career from there,” she says.  “In terms of secondary-level education, Pat O’Neill, our outgoing President, has done amazing work over the past year in raising awareness of how outdated the current Leaving Cert accounting syllabus is.  “The Institute has had a number of meetings with the Department of Education and Minister Norma Foley on this issue and Pat will now continue in the year ahead to progress to the next phase of this effort, which will be about driving action in updating the syllabus sooner rather than later.” As it stands, Chartered Accountants Ireland is already leading the way in helping secondary school pupils around the country understand what a career in accountancy is really about. In early 2020, the Institute launched Boot Camp, an online programme designed to help Transition Year and Senior Cycle students improve their accounting and business skills. The Boot Camp Challenge presents participants with a realistic scenario of a business in trouble, whose management must make important decisions about its future. Students review the relevant financial information, consider the wider circumstances, and suggest a possible course of action.  The programme has over 5,000 users active in all 26 counties in the Republic of Ireland “I’ve done the Boot Camp challenge myself, it’s brilliant. It teaches pupils about business, about how accountants are engaged in really critical business decisions, and the impact these decisions can have,” says Donovan. “Most importantly, I think it shows them that accountancy is not all about maths and numbers and breaks that perception that, unless you’re really good at maths, a career in accountancy isn’t for you, because that’s not the case at all.” Project Athena roadmap Innovation is already leading the educational agenda within Chartered Accountants Ireland, which completed Project Athena in 2022. Undertaken with funding from the Chartered Accountants Education Trust, the extensive research project included close to 100 interviews with senior members, academics and regulators in Ireland and overseas.  The findings were academically validated by Trinity College’s Learnovate Centre and will now drive the Institute’s Next Gen educational strategy.  “The roadmap for future innovation in education stemming from Project Athena is in place and we will begin to introduce changes to our education tools and delivery methods from September 2024 starting with CAP 1 and moving to CAP 2 and FAE,” says Donovan. “Some of the developments we’ll be seeing over the next two to three years will include real-time exams, which will bring more certainty to students as well as greater flexibility.  “Data analytics will be used to review students’ activities and performance on an ongoing basis so we can see how each of them is getting on in real-time and identify who might need help and support before their exams.” Global member outreach Chartered Accountants Ireland is Ireland’s largest and oldest professional accountancy body. Dating back to 1888, it represents over 31,700 members around the world and is currently educating more than 7,000 students.  It is an impressive reach and one Donovan plans to harness as she endeavours to highlight the vibrancy and variety of the profession in her role as President. “Above all, I want all of our members to know that they can reach out to me. It’s incredibly important to me to be accessible and plugged into what people are doing. I’m on social media channels, particularly LinkedIn, and I’m more than happy to engage with people, if they want to, any time,” she says. With members in more than 90 countries and active local chapters in international cities ranging from New York in the US and Sydney in Australia to Dubai in the United Arab Emirates, the Institute has a healthy presence outside the island of Ireland. “My outreach work over the next 12 months will be international as well as national. I want to meet as many members as I can in the UK, the US, Australia and the Middle East – wherever I can get to, I will! “I worked in Australia myself back in the 1990s, so I know how much it means when a President or Officer Group visits from the Institute.  “When you’re away from home, your accountancy family becomes even more important and it’s just lovely to see the President and to see them interact with, and hear the views of, members overseas.” On home turf, Donovan’s itinerary will be no less busy as she has plans to visit, celebrate and engage with District Society members across the island. “We plan to hold our council meeting in November in Cork with a dinner in the evening for our members there and that’s very much along the lines of what I want to do throughout the next 12 months — just get out there and meet members as much as I can.” Beyond its own activities, Chartered Accountants Ireland offers a crucial voice to members on the world stage in professional, policy-related and regulatory matters relevant to its membership.  The Institute is a founding member of Chartered Accountants Worldwide, an international network of over one million chartered accountants. It also plays key roles in the Global Accounting Alliance, Accountancy Europe and the International Federation of Accountants.   Advocacy and representation will be another key priority for Donovan. “I’m very keen to continue growing and solidifying these relationships so that our members have the voice they deserve wherever it needs to be heard,” she says.  “I want to build on the relationships and reciprocity agreements we have with other corporate bodies throughout the globe and to make sure that we take every opportunity to let the younger generations we want to attract to the profession know that ours is a global qualification that can take them all over the world.”

Minister for Finance Michael McGrath TD talks to Accountancy Ireland about his political career, profession as an accountant and priorities for the months ahead Minister for Finance Michael McGrath can still recall the first time he walked through the doors of Leinster House in 2007 as a publicly elected member of the Dáil. It was, he says, “a humbling experience”. “It still is today—to be elected by your community. I will always be humbled walking into Leinster House as an elected representative of the people. It is an enormous honour,” he says. McGrath’s appointment last December as Minister for Finance was the latest milestone in a political career stretching back to the late nineties.  It was also an apt appointment for McGrath, a Fellow of Chartered Accountants Ireland, who is, he says, determined to “hand over the national finances in good health” when his term draws to a close. The seeds of McGrath’s political interests were sown at a young age, growing up in Passage West on the west bank of Cork Harbour. “During my school days, I enjoyed history as a subject and an interest in current affairs was encouraged at home,” he says.  “The news would always be on in the background and there were always newspapers around we were encouraged to read.  “I remember, because we lived in a rural area where it wasn’t possible to walk or take a bus to school, we would be driven there in the morning and the radio would be on in the car. I can still hear David Hanly interviewing people on Morning Ireland.  “It’s amazing how things stick with you. Listening to those interviews sparked an interest in me about the world around me and about political life, the reach it has and how much it influences pretty much everything that we do.” Start in politics While growing up, McGrath was also heavily involved in community sports and the local development association in Passage West. “I was very fortunate to be brought up in an area where there was a Town Council. They are all unfortunately abolished now, but it was a great starting point for someone like me with an interest in politics,” he says.  “You didn’t need a huge number of votes to get elected. If you had a good network of family and friends in the community, you could succeed.” As his interest in politics was taking root, McGrath was also learning that he had a head for numbers and an interest in business. “I did business studies at second level and decided to study commerce at UCC from 1993 to 1997,” he says. “That actually coincided with the introduction of specialised degrees at the university, such as finance and accounting and Business Information Systems. But I chose the BComm because I hadn’t studied accountancy at second level.” In his third year at university, McGrath began to seriously consider his career options. “I knew I wanted to stay in Cork and that I wanted to secure a professional qualification,” he says. “The obvious next step was to sign up to a training contract and continue with my studies. There wasn’t much accounting in the BComm, so I was only exempt from the old Prof 1 and some of the Prof 2 subjects, but I was very eager. “I finished the Prof 2 exams before I even started my training contract with KPMG the September after leaving college and went straight into Prof 3 in my first year of training, and the FAE the following year.” Value of the profession McGrath chose to qualify as a Chartered Accountant because, he says, he “saw the value of the qualification and the analytical skills it gives you”. “There was a lot of respect for the qualification, then as now. It is a professional passport—a globally recognised qualification that can take you anywhere in the world. I felt that it was the natural next step for me.” Shortly after joining KPMG and aged just 22, McGrath ran for his first Town Council election in Passage West and Monkstown.  “It was the year of my FAEs. While on study leave, I split my time between studying and canvassing for the election. I really enjoyed my four years with KPMG, learned a huge amount and met my future wife Sarah working there. As I always say, we fell in love across an audit file! After qualifying, an opportunity came up that I simply couldn’t refuse. I joined Red FM in Cork as financial controller,” he says. “It was a really exciting start-up radio station in Cork with some dynamic investors and I was there for a few months before it went on air, so I was involved in setting up the commercial relationships and recruiting staff.” McGrath’s work with Red FM involved reporting daily to the station’s chief executive and monthly to the board of directors. “As a young newly qualified accountant, it was a fantastic experience and gave me a great sense of the practical application of the qualification,” he says.  “I was doing monthly accounts, reporting to the board, managing relationships with suppliers, driving commercial revenues through advertising sales, and helping out with managing staff.” From there, McGrath returned to UCC, joining the finance office as head of management information systems. “My qualification as a Chartered Accountant allowed me to stay in Cork at a time when my interest in politics was really developing and I could pursue that in parallel,” he says.  “I managed to do both for a while, but eventually had to make a decision as to where my future lay. I stayed at UCC for a couple of years, but in truth, politics was taking hold at that stage. “I was on the Town Council and ran for Cork County Council in 2004, which was a much bigger deal. It required a much more vigorous campaign covering a larger area and I needed several thousand votes to get elected.  “After I was elected, I realised very quickly that I simply couldn’t do it all. I couldn’t be a County Councillor attending meetings during the day and, at the same time, hold down a senior role at UCC. I took the decision with my now wife, Sarah, to go for politics. “At that stage I knew where I wanted to go, but I wasn’t sure I could get there, and in many ways I was blind to the personal risks of giving up a secure pensionable job at UCC. It was a great place to work, but my passion lay with politics.” Proudest achievements McGrath was elected to Dáil Éireann for the first time in 2007 as Fianna Fáil TD for Cork South Central and went on to serve as Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform from June 2020 to December 2022, when he became Minister for Finance. “Looking back on my time as Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform, what I think I am most proud of is my role in maintaining social cohesion during the COVID-19 pandemic, which was a very dark period for the country,” he says. “We had to make decisions, sometimes with limited information, and make them very quickly. I really take heart now in the way the Irish economy has since rebounded.  “It vindicates the approach we took in introducing the Pandemic Unemployment Payment Scheme and the Wage Subsidy Scheme. “Reaching political agreement on the review of the National Development Plan with a commitment of €165 billion in capital investment through to 2030 is another achievement I am very proud of—and the fact that we managed to negotiate two public sector pay deals at a time of high inflation.” “As a percentage of national income, our annual capital investment is now among the highest in the European Union and this year, over €12 billion will fund vital infrastructure in areas such as housing, transport, education, enterprise, sport and climate action.” Now, as Minister for Finance, McGrath’s highest priority is, he says, to manage the public finances safely at a time of global turbulence.  “I am acutely aware of this responsibility, not just to the people we serve now, but to the next generation and those yet to come,” he says. “As Minister for Finance, I am ultimately the guardian of the public purse and ensuring that it is properly managed is my number one priority. “I am determined to play my part in handing over the national finance in good health whenever the term of this government ends or my term in this office finishes.” Current priorities Top of the agenda for McGrath currently is navigating the ongoing economic uncertainty prompted by the war in Ukraine and resulting inflationary pressures worldwide. “We are facing huge international challenges at the moment with the ongoing war, the spiral of inflation it has triggered, and the cost-of-living pressures households and businesses are having to endure,” he says. “Despite all of this, the Irish economy is in relatively good health compared to many other developed countries and we anticipate growth across the economy this year.  “The public finances are in good shape. We recorded an estimated general government surplus last year of over €5 billion, equivalent to two per cent of our national income, and we will be forecasting a larger surplus this year. “We have more people working in Ireland than at any time in our history—close to 2.6 million.  “Safeguarding these successes against the background of international economic uncertainty is a key priority for me—managing public expenditure in a sustainable way and handling the fall-out of signing up to the international OECD BEPS agreement.” Agreed in 2021, the OECD’s Domestic Tax Base Erosion and Profit Shifting (BEPS) deal will bring to an end Ireland’s long standing 12.5 percent corporate tax rate, instead introducing a 15 percent global tax rate for multinationals with annual revenues exceeding €750 million. The lower 12.5 percent rate will be retained for multinationals with annual revenues below this threshold. BEPS will also bring changes to the way in which corporate taxes are applied and collected. “I think BEPS will, in time, come at a cost to Ireland, but that has to be balanced against the policy certainty it affords us in relation to corporate tax as a key lever and, of course, at a European level, efforts are underway to negotiate reforms to the Stability and Growth Pact,” McGrath says. “There are changes to the fiscal rules and Ireland is very much part of this process and seeking to shape the overall outcome.” Indigenous business supports In the months ahead, McGrath says he will be “paying very close attention to the suite of enterprise taxes we have in our code”. “My question is: are we doing enough for SMEs through schemes such as the Key Employee Engagement Programme, the Employment and Investment Incentive Scheme, the Capital Gains Tax environment for entrepreneurs and, of course, the R&D tax credit system?  “I am very conscious that we have an extraordinarily successful Foreign Direct Investment community in Ireland. We must protect and continue to improve this where we can by remaining competitive and investing in our infrastructure and in our talent.  “However, I also think that it will be increasingly important in the future that we have an appropriate balance in how we support our indigenous economy.  “I will be looking very closely at the suite of enterprise tax measures we offer indigenous businesses to see if there is more we can do to incentivise entrepreneurship in Ireland, to reward it and create an environment in which start-ups see Ireland as a location in which they can scale.” Wise investment in public services is another key priority for McGrath. “It is crucial for me to ensure that we have a successful economy, but also that we use the fruits of that success to invest in vital public services,” he says. “We must continue to reform our healthcare system and build up permanent capacity within the system, while also focusing on the green and digital transition, both of which will be central to our economic development over the next 10 to 20 years. We must, of course, also address the huge challenges we face in housing.”

Cormac O’Shea, Chief Financial Officer with Telegraph Media Group in the UK, talks us through the international career path that took him from Cork to Sydney and on to London  Corkman Cormac O’Shea combined his passion for maths with his early experience working for the family business to pursue a career as a Chartered Accountant and soon found himself cutting his teeth in the media sector in Australia before relocating to London where he is now Chief Financial Officer with Telegraph Media Group (TMG). As the publisher of The Daily Telegraph and The Sunday Telegraph, The Telegraph Magazine, Telegraph.co.uk and the Telegraph app, TMG operates a subscription-first business.  Here, O’Shea tells Accountancy Ireland about what led him to accountancy and how he has since forged a successful career in international media over two decades. Tell us about your career starting out. What made you decide on accountancy? I was always interested in business. My parents ran O’Shea’s Pharmacy in Blackpool on the northside of Cork city and I began helping out really young, from about the age of 10, alongside my two sisters.  That sparked an interest for me in how businesses ‘work’; what it means to run a business hands-on, dealing with customers and managing the finances.  I remember I really enjoyed dealing with the customers face-to-face (under strict supervision from my parents!). Then, at school, I enjoyed maths and physics, and applying that interest in numbers to accounting.  So, on the one hand, I had this interest in business and, on the other, numeracy.  Accountancy was attractive for those reasons. I like dealing with numbers and I like understanding how businesses invest and turn a profit. After the Leaving Cert, I moved on to University College Cork (UCC) and graduated with a degree in commerce in 1994. You left Ireland at a fairly early stage in your career, relocating to Australia in 1998 to live and work in Sydney? What prompted the move? It was my personal life that took me to Australia initially. My wife Jane, who was then my girlfriend, secured a position over there doing post-doctoral work with the Australian Government after her PhD.  That said, I already had itchy feet and, actually, the mobility of accountancy as a career was a big draw for me.  I realised that, as a Chartered Accountant, I could work anywhere in the English-speaking world and Australia just looked very attractive.  I moved over there with Jane safe in the knowledge that I could also develop my career there. My Chartered Accountant (CA) qualification, combined with my BComm from UCC, gave me an element of certainty from a career perspective.  I would say that, overall, my career journey has been fairly consistent. I’ve continued to work in financial roles and, given my interest in travel, I have been able to visit different countries and work in different cultures. What was your first job in Sydney and how did your career evolve from there? I got a job contracting with an advertising agency for a short while after I arrived, which was quite interesting. Like many Irish Chartered Accountants in Sydney, I took on contracting work where I could, and travelled the rest of the time. About a year in, I got a call from a company called APN News & Media, the Australian subsidiary of Independent News & Media.  I met with Vincent Crowley, a fellow Irish Chartered Accountants and the then CFO of APN, and he explained how the business operated across newspapers, radio and outdoor advertising. I was always interested in journalism and news media, so APN seemed like a good option for me career-wise.  Also, Australia had been a growing economy for many years with very active population growth and that was the case even 20 years ago when I moved over there. At that time, the population was about 19 million.  Now, it’s up to 26 million and rising. For me, this kind of fast-growth, multicultural society is a fascinating place to live and work. Tell us about your interest in the media? What is it about the sector that appeals to you from a professional point of view? I came from a family with a theatrical background. I have always enjoyed that mix of creativity and business, which is what makes the media interesting to me.  Media is a creative business. It combines entertainment, engagement and information—and it’s consumer-driven. You have to market your content to the consumer. From Sydney, you moved temporarily to New Zealand, then back to Sydney and on to London. What was it that kept you moving? The move from Australia to New Zealand came about because APN bought an Auckland company called Wilson & Horton.  I worked on the acquisition and then moved into a corporate finance role, which involved raising equity and debt, and debt management for the business. That experience was great. It gave me exposure to people at the top of the organisation. I was reporting directly to the CFO at APN and putting together presentations, meeting with banks and shareholders. I was offered the opportunity to become CFO of the Outdoor division, based in Sydney. Up to that point, I hadn’t managed a team of more than two or three people, so it was a big step up. I think luck plays a major role in how our lives and careers progress and this was a really lucky break for me, because my CFO at the time had a lot of faith in me. With his support, I was effectively able to launch my own career as a CFO.  After that, I moved to be the CFO of the Australian Radio Network to work with fellow Irishman Ciaran Davis. I enjoyed working in radio, because it is woven into the fabric of our day. Podcasting has become incredibly popular, and I see it as a return to the most traditional form of audio listening. In the modern environment, it happens to be on-demand.  Traditional radio broadcasting required you to turn the dial at exactly the right time. Podcasting overcomes that. Following my radio stint, I headed closer to home in 2013 to join Clear Channel International, a London-based outdoor advertising business, as CFO of its international division.  It was an elevated role with a different business and the timing was perfect for my wife and I.  By that time, we had lived in Australia for 15 years, but family life is very important to me, and you really miss it when you’re so far from home for that long. Living in London, I can be in Cork in three hours door-to-door. You joined Telegraph Media Group in September 2021 in the role of Chief Financial Officer. What was it about the position that appealed to you? It is a fantastic brand that is recognised worldwide, and I am a great believer in the power of quality brands. I’m genuinely interested in news media and the role it plays in society, and I want to work in an industry that interests me.  I am particularly interested in subscription news media and TMG is leading the charge in this space. The businesses I have worked with have always embraced transformation, particularly driven by digital change. Transformation creates interesting challenges for the CFO because you need to be very focused on the allocation of resources, and on supporting the business in the areas in which it needs to grow, while also managing existing elements. One of the big learnings that came out of the COVID-19 pandemic was the importance of trusted sources of information for citizens. The professional news media is crucial for society. Looking back now, do you have any regrets about your decision to become a Chartered Accountant? It’s one of the best decisions I ever made. I have no doubt about that. The qualification is effectively a ‘passport for life’. It has given me a technical qualification that is respected all over the world.  The brand of Chartered Accountants Ireland has been respected wherever I have worked.  In both Sydney and London, we have very active local societies of the Chartered Accountants Ireland family. There is a sense of fellowship among members. What career advice would you give your younger self based on what you know now? We all develop relationships with the people we work with, and some endure. My advice to younger professionals would be to protect and nurture these relationships and make an active effort to build and maintain a network around you as your career progresses. I should stress here that I’m not necessarily talking about the power of your network in any commercial sense. It has to come from a place of friendship. The concept of culture in the working world is something I have really come to value over the years.  The finance function in any organisation is a professional service run by well-qualified people. You have to build a good culture within your team and that means treating people well and with respect. Help other people and thank them when they help you. Irish people have a good reputation internationally. We are regarded as being sociable and being good communicators. I would advise other Chartered Accountants to take this on board when it comes to their careers. Never be afraid of it.  Of course, be thankful for where you are and what you already have, but always be ready to grasp opportunities.

Martin Moloney, Secretary General of the International Organisation of Securities Commissions, outlines his priorities for the year ahead Irishman Martin Moloney is Secretary General of the International Organisation of Securities Commissions (IOSCO). Headquartered in Madrid, Spain, the international body brings together the world’s securities regulators and is recognised as the standard setter for the securities sector worldwide. IOSCO develops, implements, and promotes adherence to internationally recognised standards for securities regulation, working closely with the G20 and the Financial Stability Board (FSB) on global regulatory reform. Accountancy Ireland sat down with Moloney to discuss his goals, priorities, and concerns for the year ahead. Q: What are the biggest risks facing investors around the world right now and how is IOSCO working with securities regulatory agencies to address these risks? The risks that investors face never really change. There are some fundamentals. You can hire the wrong advisers, you can pay them too much, you can choose the wrong times to get in or out of markets, and you can invest in the wrong things. These risks are the core risks for investors, and they have been for as long as financial markets have existed. The difficulty is that financial markets are constantly changing. New asset classes like crypto are emerging, and there are new ways in which intermediaries work on your behalf, but also earn fees for themselves. This creates new risks for investors. Also, as we saw from recent events in the UK, markets can go into sudden periods of stress and crash. We do our best, working with others, to try to make markets as resilient as they can be, to ensure that these episodes are few and far between insofar as we can. These are the big issues facing us currently. Really, it all comes down to integrity—being able to trust the price you see when you invest in the markets and ensuring that you are not being fooled by people who are trying to cheat you out of your money. Q: You have described the rise of cryptocurrency as an area fraught with risk, requiring “a lot of work” on the part of regulators. Can you tell us more? There is no doubt in my mind that we have reached a turning point in relation to crypto. This is not because of the so-called ‘Crypto Winter’. The value of crypto might go up or down, but that is not really the issue. The point that we all have to observe and recognise is that crypto has survived and has continued to survive over a number of years. It is reasonable to assume that it is not going away and, therefore, it has to be regulated. I am delighted to say that, since I have joined IOSCO, the organisation has moved forward with its policy in this area and is now very quickly developing a set of guidelines for the market on how different jurisdictions should regulate crypto and the common standards they should aim to achieve in doing so. We are seeing a number of regions, notably the United States and Europe, now moving towards developing legal frameworks. I have no doubt that this is far from the end of the matter, however—it is just the beginning. Crypto is going to evolve and change as people get on top of the technology and new opportunities emerge. The most important thing we must all keep an eye on here is the outcome for the investor. In the first years of crypto, a huge number of people lost money through fraud. Other people, who may not even have been aware of it, lost money through market manipulation, insider trading and various other dubious activities we know well. Very often, this has been driven by conflicts of interest. If you dig down into the principles articulated by IOSCO for financial markets many years ago, you will find us warning against many of the phenomena we are now seeing in crypto markets. Theft does not change. It might happen in a different location, but theft is still theft. Bad management is still bad management, no matter where it happens. It is up to us to re-articulate these very simple, but really important, ideas and explain how they can apply in the crypto space. It is also important for the crypto sector itself to come up with good solutions and technologically enabled solutions, so that its work can be supervised and that it can reach the same standard of regulation as the rest of the financial sector. There are a number of individuals, I think, within the crypto sector who have come to understand that they need to move positively towards a strong regulatory framework in order to bottom out their businesses and remain stable. If we do not start to see self-regulation within the crypto sector, then I think we will see more jurisdictions banning crypto. It is just not sustainable over the medium term to try to avoid the regulatory frameworks that apply to everyone else. It is one thing to see yourself as a different asset class. It’s quite another to see yourself as an entirely different industry when you are effectively doing the same thing. Q: So, you do believe that cryptocurrency has a long-term future provided that there is robust regulation in place across the board? I think there is some potential for this asset class, but it is going to become more challenging. I don’t have a crystal ball, so I try not to predict the future. I see some very interesting new products developing in the decentralised finance space, and I wonder if this is ultimately where crypto is going to go. We are all used to a simple model in which you get quite non-functional assets like Bitcoin being traded and people making money primarily out of the bubbles in Bitcoin. The use cases for crypto continue to be worked on extensively, however. So, every time you have one of those bubbles, what is actually happening is that money is being raised to allow people to invest in new potential use cases. There are now so many use cases that have come and gone, and failed ideas that have been touted and promoted, you could be forgiven for thinking that there are no use cases left for crypto—but that is probably wrong. I think people will continue trying to figure out good use cases for crypto. I don’t think it’s going away any time soon. Q: You have spoken recently about the greenwashing risk facing securities regulators—what can be done to address this? We put out a couple of reports in 2021 where we looked at the greenwashing issue in great detail, listing the different ways in which this phenomenon occurs. We had to acknowledge, however, that it is not just about ‘evil intent’. Activity that might be described as greenwashing often happens, because the market structures needed to adequately support sustainable finance are not yet in place. Sometimes, you do get people who are frankly trying to fool investors by issuing misleading information, but, equally, the markets as they stand are just not built for sustainable financing. Having identified the problem and having asked the industry to work as hard as possible to reduce the amount of greenwashing that now exists, we have had to acknowledge that the system itself needs to change. Regulators have to do it, governments have to do it, standard-setters have to do it—to create a better system to achieve true sustainable finance. If, for example, I am proposing an investment that has a strong impact in terms of reducing carbon emissions, I should get a better price on the market and a better investment price for that security than someone who comes to market with a security for a carbon-emitting project. We want the market to be sensitive to the environmental impact of different proposals, companies and products. They must have access to information that is reliable; that has been independently audited; and that brokers can bring together to compare stocks from different parts of the world and determine differential pricing based on their impact on the environment. Getting all of this right would be an incredibly hard job, so we have broken the job down into a number of elements. We will be progressively working on putting these building blocks in place over the next couple of years, in order to make sure that the process can be regulated and that people who don’t do the right thing can be held to account on the basis that they could have done the right thing and chose not to. Q: As the move to establish standards for environmental, social and governance (ESG) reporting gathers pace, what is your take on the current efforts underway? We have a very close relationship with the International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB). We effectively oversee its work and, if we like what it is doing, we will endorse its standards, and recommend those standards to individual regulatory securities agencies around the world, so that these jurisdictions can adopt the standards as they see fit. The fundamental issue we are all facing is that a sustainable financial marketplace has to be a global marketplace. If you have fragmentation and you don’t have the same information sets available in different parts of the world, you cannot have a true comparison between different securities, and capital cannot flow to the best projects. It is no good for anyone if Europe is pristine, while the rest of the world is working in a different way. What happens in the Amazonian rainforest matters to all of us. Capital, therefore, has to flow from those places where it is abundant, such as Europe and North America, to locations in which the opportunities exist to do the right thing. What IOSCO has said to the countries we work with around the world is, “do this any way you want, but use the ISSB standards as a baseline and build your own approach on that foundation”. Put simply, you can do all you want in the ESG space, but unless we have a common core, we cannot create a global financial market that will bring about any real change. Q: Can you tell us about the work you are doing with the Financial Stability Board in relation to investment funds? This is a very big project for us. Investment funds are a crucial mechanism all around the world for people to get access to markets on a collective basis, but they can have a concerning impact on markets in periods of crisis. We have been doing work in this area since 2016. We have done a lot already, but there is more to do. A major focus for us next year will be trying to make sure that the kind of funds both ordinary individual investors and the more risk-averse institutional investors choose are safe in a crisis. We are trying to ensure that, if you are investing in a product that is riskier, it will be clear to you that it is more difficult to get your money out of it; that these kinds of investment funds are not the equivalent of a bank account. This is a typical example of what we do, but there are lots of others. We do a lot of work on cyber-resilience, and we are also very interested in the change in the behaviour of retail investors and their vulnerability to scams. One of the problems we face at the moment is that, while technology has made it easy or cheap for people to invest in the markets, it has also made it easy or cheap for fraudsters to get at many thousands of people. We need to figure out better and better ways to stop these fraudsters and prevent them in their designs. About Martin Moloney Prior to joining IOSCO as Secretary General in September 2021, Martin Moloney was Director General of the Jersey Financial Services Commission and, before that, he worked as a Special Adviser on Risk and Regulation to the Central Bank of Ireland, where he served for 16 years, previously heading up the Markets Policy, Markets Supervision, and Legal and Finance Divisions. Moloney began his early career working in industry with Barclays Bank and Bank of Ireland in London, before returning to Ireland to work with the Department of Justice, Department of Finance, the Irish Competition Authority. Born in Dublin, he has a master’s degrees in Business Law and Economic Policy, both from Trinity College Dublin.

Elaine Coughlan, one of Ireland’s most successful venture capital investors, tells us how her experience in accountancy and audit led to a high-flying career in technology Since qualifying as a Chartered Accountant and cutting her teeth in audit in the 1990s, just as the first wave of tech entrepreneurs in Ireland were beginning to access US capital markets, Elaine Coughlan has carved out an illustrious career in venture capital. Dublin-born Coughlan is the co-founder and joint Managing Partner of Atlantic Bridge, the global growth technology fund with more than €1 billion in assets under management across nine funds. For Coughlan, her career is a testament to both her training in finance and the power of human connection in business the world over. “Atlantic Bridge has over 35 companies we have successfully sold or ‘IPOed’ and I am immensely proud of that,” she says. “The wins drive you on because you can see what’s possible and those Irish entrepreneurs become role models for the next generation. I’m proud of the assets we have under management, and that Atlantic Bridge now has people in Dublin, London, Paris, Munich and Palo Alto in Silicon Valley. That is a truly global footprint, and it really helps us to scale our companies.” Early connections Coughlan credits the professional connections she made at an early stage in her career at Ernst & Young with setting her on the path to professional success. “Some of the people I met back in the nineties, our clients at the time, were hugely influential on me,” she says. Among those clients was Smurfit (now Smurfit Kappa), already a long-established industry leader in paper packaging production. “I was seconded from Ernst & Young to work with Smurfit when it was probably the number one Irish company in terms of market capitalisation and really blazing a trail in Irish business,” she says. “It is still a phenomenal company today, but for me at that time, Smurfit was just so ambitious and far-reaching in its approach to mergers and acquisitions, and the capital markets. I worked on fundraising and acquisitions with them and had early exposure to some of their senior executives—people like Gerry Fagan, their then-CFO.” Coughlan forged other crucial connections at the time with Bill McCabe, founder of CBT, the e-learning group, and Iona Technologies’ Chris Horn. “Bill and Chris were the first entrepreneurs in Ireland to float tech companies on the Nasdaq and, if you look at what they had in common with Smurfit, it was really that they were all entrepreneurial,” she says now. Coughlan would leave Ernst & Young to join Iona ahead of the company’s Initial Public Offering. “I knew then that practice probably wasn’t for me. That’s not to say that you can’t be entrepreneurial in practice, but the cut and thrust of the tech business pulled me in,” she says. “I remember traveling over to the US with CBT back in 1993 and that was it for me. There was such a sense of possibility.” Coughlan went on to join Parthus, the semiconductor IP company co-founded by Brian Long, and the pair formed an abiding partnership, co-founding both Atlantic Bridge and GloNav, the GPS company acquired in 2007 for $110 million. “All these years later, I am still in business with the same people, and they were the people that had an impact on me starting out. They were the people I learned from and the people who were generous with their time and their knowledge, and willing to give me experience and opportunities,” she says. For young Chartered Accountants starting out in their career, Coughlan has this advice: “Above all else, nurture your connections. These young professionals will already be well-qualified and proven in their ability and resilience, because training to become a Chartered Accountant is challenging in itself,” she says. “The question they have to ask themselves is ‘what differentiates me beyond that?’ It comes down to being able to combine your knowledge with strong relationships in ways that bring about better outcomes.” As Coughlan sees it, building solid sustainable relationships in business isn’t simply a case of networking and ‘transactional interactions’. “It’s about finding people who share your values and ethics, whose accomplishments and abilities you admire, and who have the ability to lead and inspire. You always have to be thinking long-term, not just about your next connection on LinkedIn,” she says. Supporting start-ups Coughlan’s commitment to supporting start-ups and advancing Ireland as a leading hub for technology development was recognised at this year’s Irish Accountancy Awards, at which she won the prize for outstanding contribution to the profession. “When we started Atlantic Bridge in 2004, we wanted to help tech companies in Ireland to scale successfully. Ireland is a small island and a small economy, so there are two things tech companies here need to scale—they need to move beyond the island to reach customers and they need access to capital,” she says. “We wanted to cross the Atlantic to the US, because it is the largest market in the world in terms of customers and capital markets. At the time, Ireland had a VC market of less than €100 million. It’s 10 times that size now, but back then, it was really small.” The primary focus for Atlantic Bridge today continues to be “deep tech” innovators in the business-to-business (B2B) space. “We’re not after instant gratification or overnight success. These are businesses with defensible research-intensive technologies that are primed to scale when the time is right,” says Coughlan. “Our investors are patient. They are looking for strong long-term returns, and we are very proud to have reached the stage where we have raised nine funds, because that is not an easy thing to do in this industry.” Coughlan warns, however, that we are entering a “new investment cycle”, in which surging inflation, rising interest rates, and the risk of recession, are all making investors more risk averse. “The outlook for Atlantic Bridge in the short-term will be cautious and tactical, but beyond that, we are optimistic and deeply committed to the technology trends we are seeing today that will make a difference in the future,” she says. “A lot of the technologies we’re investing in now are in climate change action—low-power, low-carbon enablers—and in medical technology and the digitisation of health, where we can meet unmet needs. We’re focusing on technologies like Artificial Intelligence and semiconductors—the fundamental building blocks that will be built into new products over the next three to five years.” Research and development As the economy enters uncertain terrain, Coughlan is urging the Government to continue investing in research and development (R&D). “Ireland has to continue to invest in R&D. We need to hold our nerve in continuing to invest in the best and brightest people and start-ups, because they will drive the next generation of growth,” she says. “Today, we are investing about 1.25 percent of GDP in R&D. We need to get that up to between 2.5 percent and three percent. The future economy will be knowledge-intensive and that requires knowledge-intensive people.” Coughlan is equally committed to the advancement of her profession, and proud of her own achievements as a Chartered Accountant. “The ‘bean counter’ perception is one too many people have of accountants, but I would probably be the last person you’d ask to do a P&L statement,” she says. “I can tell you if it is right or wrong though, because I understand the numbers and what they mean. I can interrogate and interpret any set of numbers and that is because I am a Chartered Accountant. All business now is run on data and our profession gives us a really strong grounding in using data to make decisions—and that is the future. “There are doors that are opened to you when you train as an accountant. You learn about process, structure, deadlines, and relationships. All of these skills are incredibly important. “You come out of it battle-hardened and resilient, and with all these options: to stay in practice; to focus on technical work; to go into consultancy; financial services; or business and entrepreneurship. The opportunities are phenomenal.” Growing up in Beaumont in north Dublin in the recession-hit 1980s, however, Coughlan had envisaged a different career for herself. It was a chance encounter that set her on the path to accountancy and a high-flying career in venture capital. Early career path “I was good at numbers at school and I studied accountancy for the Leaving Cert, but I wouldn’t say I was destined to be an accountant. I fully recognise now that it was my accountancy and audit experience that led me into the technology industry, but my real interest growing up was people,” she says. “I wanted to work in a people-focused environment, so I applied to study marketing and languages at DCU and went for a summer job at a small accountancy firm to keep me going in the meantime.” Coughlan didn’t get the summer job, but she was contacted by her interviewer and urged instead to consider accountancy as a full-time career. “It was 1989, unemployment in Ireland was something like 15 percent and so many people were emigrating to find work in the UK and the US,” she says. “I didn’t know anything about becoming a Chartered Accountant, but I wrote to the Institute and was offered a training contract with Ernst & Young. Here was this opportunity to have my fees paid and earn a wage with guaranteed work in a really tough economy. It was a great deal. That’s why I always say to this day, ‘what’s meant for you won’t pass you by’.”

With the launch of ‘The Garage’, Pfizer Global Business Services Dublin is helping accounting trainees discover how they can apply digital technology to make their work faster and easier It started with a conversation between colleagues about how their profession might evolve at a time of immense digital transformation, and how they might harness this transformative power to support their fast-growing Dublin enterprise. Aoife Allen, FCA and Senior Director with Pfizer Global Business Services Dublin (GBS Dublin) recalls: “It was three years ago, and we were thinking about how we would be working in the future. I remember the question was, ‘what will our future colleague look five or 10 years from now?’” At the time, Albert Bourla, Chair and CEO of Pfizer Inc, had set a challenge for the organisation globally to “win the digital race in pharma,” and Allen and her colleague John Anglim were overseeing a successful graduate programme for Pfizer GBS Dublin in association with Chartered Accountants Ireland. “Our graduate programme was really starting to ramp-up then, in terms of numbers—a cohort of younger colleagues who had grown up with digital technologies, and we wanted to find a way to help them explore how we could use digital technology to make our own processes more efficient and effective, with an enhanced control environment.” ‘The Garage’ – a digital innovation program So began ‘The Garage’, a one-hour weekly session, during which Chartered Accountant trainees were encouraged to explore how they might use digital technologies to make their work more efficient and easier to manage. “We challenged them to come up with a project idea, and then to build it. It was about teaching our graduates how to think differently and pass their learnings on to the wider organisation, so that we could harness the power of digital to improve how we worked together within the organisation,” John Anglim, Director, Pfizer GBS Dublin, explains. The Garage is an innovative applied learning program, developed and led by Pfizer GBS Dublin colleagues Colin Byrnes, Director of Global Process Transformation, and Lorna Flanagan, Director Statutory Reporting CoE. Nurturing the digital mindset “The idea behind the program was really about recognising a need to nurture and develop our graduates’ skill sets in working with digital tools and technologies as they progress through their accountancy training,” Colin Byrnes explains. “Our Garage sessions take our graduates through concepts such as design thinking, analytics and problem-solving, as well as introductions to some of the technologies we use, like Alteryx, Tableau, Dataiku and Power Automate.” As Lorna Flanagan sees it, The Garage is about equipping the accountant of today for their evolving role as the ‘accountant of the future’. “The role of the accountant has really moved on from repetitive tasks to providing higher value-add services,” she says. “Our hope is that The Garage will set our graduates up to support problem-solving at Pfizer GBS and also enhance their accountancy training experience, so that we can support them to become our ‘colleague of the future’.” Impressive results So far, The Garage has yielded impressive results, with participants using new technologies, like Robotic Process Automation, Visualisation and Predictive Analytics, to build innovative solutions for Pfizer GBS Dublin and the wider organisation. One such participant is Reza Shahrokhi, as Aoife Allen explains: “Reza’s project concerned an incredibly time-consuming process that was used by managers right across Pfizer to review Authorised Signature Limits (ASLs). “Every year, these managers had to coordinate the review of thousands of ASLs on large Excel files via email. It was an incredibly time-consuming and manual process and, through his participation in Garage, Reza found a solution that was adapted for use across the entire organisation.” Shahrokhi’s solution used Power Automate, a tool that integrates Microsoft applications such as Excel, Outlook, Teams and more, to simplify the ASL review process. “He effectively removed emails from the process, collating responses from managers in seconds and automatically updating files, reducing errors and time for follow-up,” explains Flanagan. “Reza presented his project to GBS Dublin leaders and departments, showcasing his work at a GBS Dublin Innovation Forum where he was awarded one of 10 Innovation Awards in 2021. Reza really exemplified the Pfizer goal to win the digital race in pharma by making our work faster and easier. He explored and defined the problem and leveraged technology to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of a manual process.” Automating journal entries Another successful Garage project by graduate trainee Kate Connell leveraged digital technology to automate the manual month-end journal entry process. “Kate’s project explored a recurring issue whereby a manual journal had to be booked monthly to reclass original banking entries in the SAP accounting system to certain division- or market-coded accounts,” Lorna Flanagan explains. “The process was taking two hours to post manually each month. By navigating and preparing a ‘process flow map’ and exploring the functionality of the Alteryx tool, Kate was able to apply a digital workflow to automate the preparation of the final journal.” Connell’s project was showcased to GBS Dublin leadership and, as a result, different departments were able to leverage the technology to automate repetitive manual journal entries. Digital workflow solution Ian Banahan, meanwhile, used his participation in Garage to identify a digital workflow solution for an important financial supply chain process. “Graduates who take part in The Garage are asked to identify a work activity they see as relatively simple but feel could be improved. The idea is to create a ‘focus’ for practical learning during the Garage sessions,” explains Colin Byrnes. “In his day-to-day work, Ian was involved in a process whereby the GBS Dublin team calculates and communicates critical financial information to country teams supporting the financial global supply chain and distribution of products. “While the process was robust and utilised the latest digital technologies to help calculate processes, Ian could see that there was still a lot of manual communication involved—via emails, for example.” As part of his Garage project, Banahan documented the flow of information exchange involved in the process, uncovering challenges with information tracking and management. “Ian used the Garage network to identify digital workflow tools that could potentially address these issues, assessed them and drafted recommendations. He presented his findings to GBS Dublin leadership and got approval to move ahead with the project,” says Byrnes. “Since then, the Global Process Lead responsible for this area has developed the proposal further and the plan is to start implementing Ian’s solution by the end of this year.” The future of Garage Originally introduced in 2021, the 12-week Garage programme is now entering its third cycle and, for the first time, will be open to all Dublin GBS colleagues in addition to graduate trainees. For Aoife Allen, the success of the initiatives is a point of pride. “I am very proud of The Garage. A lot of the projects that have come out of it have brought real value to the organisation, and to our day-to-day work as Chartered Accountants and financial professionals,” she says. “These accounting problems and projects are so specific to the activities we are involved in that, really, only we can fully understand and solve them. “By giving our graduates—and now our wider team—the tools they need, they are able to look at accounting processes and say with confidence, ‘I can automate this process, and then spend my working time using the information it’s giving me to carry out work that is far more valuable. “They are effectively solving day-to-day end-user problems and that is empowering, because it encourages them to think differently about how they, and how we as an organisation, approach our activities.” History of innovation Pfizer has a deeply rooted history of innovation in Ireland. One of the first pharmaceutical companies to establish a base in Ireland, the organisation celebrated its 50th anniversary here in 2019 and now employs 4,000 people at five locations in Cork, Dublin, and Kildare. GBS Dublin was established in 2003 and provides end-to-end financial accounting services, compliance oversight, and business transformation support to Pfizer operations spanning 150 markets worldwide. As such, says Allen, GBS Dublin acts as Pfizer’s own ‘in-house’ accounting firm with the same high-value capability and talent resource. “That is how we see ourselves, and what we have responsibility for are the complex, high-risk and knowledge-based accounting transactions that support Pfizer’s financial operations globally as well as regionally here in Ireland,” she says. GBS Dublin is also among the biggest employers of Chartered Accountants in the Irish market outside the Big Four accounting firms. “We are very fortunate to have access to such a big pool of very talented candidates who have a really good reputation internationally,” Allen says. “We have a young, qualified, educated, and diverse workforce. We have many different nationalities here; people who speak many different languages; who have experience in different local Generally Accepted Accounting Principles. “This means that we are able to provide an international organisation with financial support from here in Dublin, and we also now manage in-market colleagues responsible for statutory and fiduciary duties.” Evolving role of the accountant For Allen, who grew up in Wexford and trained as a Chartered Accountant with PwC, her time with GBS Dublin has allowed her to carve out a varied and satisfying career path. “I joined GBS Dublin 16 years ago as an accountant after living and working in Australia for a while after qualifying. Since joining, I’ve changed roles eight times. I have had so many opportunities. “After joining as an accountant, I became team lead, and then regional team lead, and progressed from there to a director role and, most recently, senior director, with colleagues from 41 countries reporting into my organisation.” In the years since she began her own career, Allen has also borne witness to the evolving role of accountants in all sectors. “How we do our job on a day-to-day basis now is very different to how it was when I trained. Great change is underway within the profession of accountancy and that change is being driven by digital technologies,” she says. “We have access now to digital tools—not just these big Enterprise Resource Planning systems like SAP and Oracle—but also end-user technologies like Alteryx, Dataiku and Power Automate. These tools are allowing accountants to carry out our work in new and different ways and creating the potential for real innovation.” Breakthroughs that change lives This innovation is at the heart of the GBS Dublin ethos and the driving motivation behind The Garage and other digital initiatives. “We have an amazing wealth of talent here in our own workforce in Dublin and, at the same time, access to these emerging digital tools that can really transform the way they work and add value to the wider organisation,” says Allen. “We reckon about 75 percent of the people working for Pfizer GBS Dublin have a qualification in accountancy, tax, or another high-value profession. Our colleagues are highly qualified and highly capable people, and we are part of Pfizer; a company whose purpose is to drive ‘breakthroughs that change patients’ lives’.” “Our own purpose and responsibility here at GBS Dublin, as I see it, is to employ that same ethos as an enabling function to the wider organisation and—just as our colleagues in science and manufacturing do—to use innovation to drive breakthroughs. “Being a truly innovative organisation involves learning to do things differently, being open to change, and being prepared for a future of constant change.” For Allen, meanwhile, how she approaches her leadership role as a Senior Director at Pfizer Dublin GBS is also changing. “What I’m learning is that, as a leader, you have to get out of the way. You have to give people the space to come up with ideas and to share them. You have to ask everyone to contribute, to listen and encourage all of their ideas. “That means listening equally to everyone in a meeting, from graduate right up to director level. I want to hear what the graduate has to say as much as I want to hear what the director has to say. You must listen, because absolutely everyone can bring something really valuable to the table.”