Advancing female leaders at PwC Sri Lanka

A s a member firm of the PwC Network, PwC Sri Lanka which provides professional services takes diversity and inclusivity seriously: its Network Leadership Team has made it a priority to ensure that everyone across PwC’s global network feels included and valued. For several years, PwC has won global recognition and major international awards for its efforts to foster an inclusive and diverse culture across its network. In 2020 for instance, PwC was recognised as the HRC Foundation Best Places to Work and Fortune 100 Best Companies to Work For.

Recognising that doing more is a critical need, PwC has set up an Inclusion and Diversity Council, a global body with a mandate to engage with senior partners and local and regional diversity leaders across the network to drive accountability and accelerate action at a local level. Developing inclusive leadership skills in all its people has become more important than ever before. PwC member firms around the world have many different programmes in place to help women reach their full potential. It is working hard to accelerate progress by reviewing recruitment processes for senior roles, offering more mentoring and leadership development opportunities and opening more roles to flexible working for women and men. At PwC Sri Lanka, much has already been accomplished in this regard.

Diversity and inclusivity have always been important goals, but it is a meritocracy established at the firm early on that has helped women thrive at PwC Sri Lanka. Four out of ten partners and more than half the directors at PwC Sri Lanka are female compared to a fifth at PwC Global in terms of female partners and little more than a third for directors.

Nearly half of PwC Sri Lanka’s senior management team is female, while their representation is 44% at PwC Global. PwC Sri Lanka has a team of experienced, dynamic professional women leaders engaged in diverse functional areas and helping to drive the firm’s purpose of building trust in society and solving important problems.

These female professionals work across PwC Sri Lanka’s services portfolio spanning Audit & Assurance, Tax, Advisory and Technology Consulting Services.

Within Client Advisory services, PwC has specialities as varied as International Development Assistance, Mergers and Acquisitions, Finance Function Effectiveness, Human Resource Services, Capital Projects & Infrastructure and Deals Strategy, CIO Advisory, Corporate Finance, Startup Advisory, Strategy Consulting, Cybersecurity, Real Estate Advisory, Oracle Cloud Application Consulting, and PwC’s Academy Sri Lanka.

Women number 220 in a 500-strong team at PwC Sri Lanka which is also building technology consultancy capabilities, with tech and other non-accounting and finance professionals. Here, Shakila Perera, Partner Audit and Assurance Services, Charmaine Tillekeratne, Director Tax Services, Ruvini Fernando, Director Advisory Services, and Zahra Cader, Director Advisory Services, tell us why PwC Sri Lanka is doing well in terms of diversity and inclusivity, and why it is a great place for women to work, grow, and build successful careers.

Here, Shakila Perera, Partner Audit and Assurance Services, Charmaine Tillekeratne, Director Tax Services, Ruvini Fernando, Director Advisory Services, and Zahra Cader, Director Advisory Services, tell us why PwC Sri Lanka is doing well in terms of diversity and inclusivity, and why it is a great place for women to work, grow, and build successful careers.

The reason why PwC Sri Lanka is doing well on diversity is that we have a culture that recognises and rewards performance irrespective of a person’s gender identity, race or any other factor. I have worked at PwC for 20 years and not once during that time did I feel any different to my male colleagues at the firm. Everyone has equal opportunities and a voice, so we didn’t have to rethink strategy around gender diversity or redefine the role of women because the foundation was already in place, it was already an ingrained part of the culture.

The accounting profession has evolved a great deal over the recent past. Professional accountants play a vital role in ensuring financial reporting remains credible and stable, but they have moved on to central decision -making roles, leading businesses and even driving innovation and technology adoption. For this reason, I believe young women should consider a career in this profession.

Sri Lanka is an emerging economy so there will be plenty of opportunities both in the public and private sectors to grow professionally and become agents of change.

Here at PwC where I am a partner of Audit and Assurance Services, we use state-of-the-art digital technology to perform audits, process information faster and enable transparency throughout the audit process. I am responsible for risk management and independence, which is a fundamental requirement to what we do. PwC Sri Lanka offers young people the opportunity not only to engage in audit or other client services but to do so in a tech-enabled environment, in a culture that lauds and appreciates performance and hard work.

We have an open-door policy and collaboration is encouraged across the group, including the global network which makes working at PwC truly exciting. PwC Sri Lanka provides career opportunities in non-accounting areas such as advisory, tech consultation services as well.

Tax service is one of the core business areas of PwC and it’s an area that provides constant intellectual challenges daily as we strive to provide innovative solutions to all our stakeholders, clients, industries, and sometimes policymakers and regulators. There is never a dull moment because policy and regulations are in constant flux and change rapidly.

One of the most satisfying experiences I have had is leading the digital transformation of the tax division. Covid-19 has forced everyone to work remotely and we eased into it with ease. A mindset change was required on the part of our staff and clients, but everyone accepted the new normal quickly. Today, we engage our clients via an online platform and information system which enables us to share and process large volumes of complex documentation. We have significantly reduced the paperwork and improved efficiency.

We expect some exciting opportunities for growth ahead. Sri Lanka is moving towards digitizing and streamlining routine tax filings and adopting global best practices and trends. This bodes well for us being part of a global network that opens other areas of expertise and knowledge, so when change happens we do not have to reinvent the wheel.

I am responsible for Capital Projects and Infrastructure Advisory, which is a key service provided by PwC globally. We deal with large-scale infrastructure projects advising the government or the private sector, as the case maybe, on how best to structure, finance and manage these projects. It is a very interesting and growing area of work. Importantly, we help the government leverage opportunities to collaborate with the private sector and structure these transactions in a manner that is beneficial to the government, the investors and society.

On the other side, we untangle complex projects and advise private investors on feasibility, long term project financing requirements, to help them prepare to invest in these projects. At PwC, we have the benefit of working closely with our global colleagues, so we have access to an extensive pool of knowledge and global practices in the area of public-private partnerships in large scale infra projects.

This is an area that will grow rapidly given the state of development Sri Lanka is in right now. The government has limited resources to finance the infrastructure drive, which is why attracting private investments to supplement it is critical.

In other parts of the world, PPPs are commonly used for infra projects. Apart from private sector companies, investors including fund managers, pension funds, and insurance funds are also interested in investing in public infrastructure. There are many opportunities that can be unlocked in capital markets to enable infra financing and we would like to bring those best practices to Sri Lanka, since it will eventually benefit the country by widening the pool of capital available for infrastructure development.

I am the Diversity and Inclusion Lead for PwC Sri Lanka. The role is relatively new, but PwC Sri Lanka has practiced it for a long time. PwC Sri Lanka embraces diversity, there are people from different backgrounds, gender, race, and identities. It is all about appreciating that diversity and respecting different views. In business, diverse views lead to innovation. I for one deeply appreciate this role because I believe and value it.

I handle the international development consultancy practice of PwC Sri Lanka. We work with multiple donor agencies in collaboration with the public and private sector to implement programmes to help boost economic growth. Some of the important areas

we work in include government process re-engineering and institutional strengthening, public financial management, SME development, value chain analysis, capacity building, gender empowerment, project management as well as monitoring and evaluation. Research is another important service we offer our clients. One of the women entrepreneurship projects we implement was showcased at the G20 Summit, where we, alongside the President of the Asian Development Bank, presented a report to the Japanese Prime Minister in front of all the G20 world leaders. What we do at PwC Sri Lanka is to ensure donor funding is channelled to productive work, help fill socio-economic gaps and foster inclusive growth.

Recent projects we executed have contributed to developing a national brand for the IT/BPM sector, developing a campaign towards attracting female school students to IT careers and building entrepreneurial skills of rural women. The work we do resonates closely with the firm’s purpose of building trust in society and solving important problems. Being passionate about empowering women and communities, I found in PwC a place where I can do the work that I love, and the culture I was such that I was able to progress in my career too.