Digital audit expertise embedded in a global mindset and a deep understanding of people

Taking the opportunity to let life change you ‒ professionally and personally

It's been a long, varied and eventful journey since I started life in Angola, with stops in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Italy, Switzerland, Silicon Valley and back to Switzerland. But do you know one of the conclusions I've reached along the way? It's less about the list of places you've been and more about the opportunities you've taken to let living in unfamiliar environments change the way you think and behave.

Take my teenage years in Colombier, near Neuchâtel in French-speaking Switzerland. My parents, my older sister and I moved there when I was two. One thing I was very good at as a child was football. At the age of 15, I joined the Lausanne Sports Academy. We lived and breathed football, except for the time we spent in class. That's where I learnt to focus on my goals: to be disciplined, despite all the temptations a teenager faces. I had enough discipline to sign a semi-professional contract with FC Lausanne-Sport. I played there for a year before disaster struck: not only was I injured, but my club went bankrupt. I was only 18.

What do you do when your dreams and ambitions are shattered? I decided to study economics in Neuchâtel. I don't think I've ever really looked back.

The travel experience

In 2008, after graduating, I joined PwC's Lausanne office as an associate. I had a dream of living and working abroad, and in 2013 I spoke to my coach about the possibility of a secondment. As my wife was pregnant at the time, we decided that a short secondment would be best.

We started looking for opportunities and were about to go to New York. But then I got a call from PwC's San Jose office. They were keen to have me, but didn't think it would make much sense for me to come for just six months. Would I be open to staying a little longer?

To make a long story short, we moved to San Jose for two years. It turned out to be an incredible experience. Working with clients like Facebook (Meta), Tesla, Google and very innovative biotech start-ups. I learned that while the US isn't much more innovative than Switzerland per se - after all, we also have great centres of innovation in this country, including the two Federal Institutes of Technology - the real difference is that people in the San Francisco Bay Area aren't afraid to take risks and bring new ideas to life. The Swiss, on the other hand, tend to be more cautious.

Undoubtedly, Switzerland has its own vibrant and dynamic innovation landscape, but in the San Francisco Bay Area there is a prevailing spirit of "try, fail and try again".

During my secondment, I attended many start-up forums where most of the young people there had founded three, four or five companies before achieving success, often starting their entrepreneurial journey during their university years. Witnessing their perseverance and determination was a powerful reminder that "the more we try, the more experience we gain, laying the foundation for future success".  This reinforced the lessons I had already learned from my own personal experience of radically changing the course of my life following my injury.

When I started the Sports Academy in Lausanne, I knew that very few would make it. But I stuck with it and gave it my all. I've discovered striking parallels between the mindset of an athlete and that of an entrepreneur in the start-up world.

Knowledge transfer from Silicon Valley

My experience in the Bay Area has certainly paid off in my work in Assurance at PwC. Back in Switzerland as a Director in Digital Assurance Services, I've been able to draw on what I've learned from working on initiatives with clients in the States to support leadership and find ways to build trust through their business and digital transformation. My work here involves supporting our clients as they navigate major changes to their technology and digital strategies. I guide them through these transitions, and help them build trust in the technologies they are using.

My experience in San Jose, working with innovative clients who were early adopters in areas such as cloud computing, process automation and artificial intelligence, has given me a deep understanding of the challenges faced by the companies I now work with in Switzerland.

For me, assurance is about building transparency and trust in society and from person to person. It can involve a lot of technology, but at the end of the day it's something fundamentally human.

 #That’sAssurance for me