AUGUST 2014 BCBusiness 17 PETER HOLST
Fiona Macfarlane
Trying to break into the legal profession is a tough gig
for anyone, but Fiona Macfarlane found that as an
immigrant woman, it was near impossible. She's had
better luck since switching into accounting, and now
runs the B.C. operations for one of Canada's Big Four
accounting firms. But the question of diversity contin-
ues to be a driving factor in her career
by David Jordan
H
aving been raised in
apartheid South Africa,
Fiona Macfarlane knows
a thing or two about bias
and its effects. When
she came to Canada in 1987 as
an immigrant woman trying to
break into the legal profession,
she felt its effects firsthand.
Trained as a lawyer, she became
an honorary CA in 2012 and
today is recognized as one of the
sharpest minds in Canadian tax
law, having been called upon to
advise the federal government on
the
GST, among other things. In
her dual role as both managing
partner and chief inclusiveness
officer for the B.C. office of Ernst
& Young
LLP (EY), she oversees a
staff of 400.
Explain to me what a managing
partner does.
I lead EY's practice in B.C. and
I'm responsible for the top and
bottom line of our business, so it's
like being the
CEO on a local level.
To give you an analogy, it's a bit
like a coach on a soccer team:
you're deciding how to deploy
the resources, how you pick the
players and then you coach them
to help them win. The fun part of
this role is that it's ever changing.
The environment changes as
our clients' needs change, as
the people that we hire change.
What's your biggest challenge right
now?
The challenge is really to develop people
and give them opportunities to develop
so that they're exceptional. Not only
that they're technically proficient
accountants, but they need to be busi-
ness advisers, they need to be able to
build diverse teams that can function
globally. We have an apprentice model
in the
CPA profession, so you have to be
able to develop others.
F I N A N C E
