Deloitte
Manager – Tech Strategy & Innovation · 2015–2020
Zero big office experience to national AI/blockchain SME, promoted to Manager at record pace, and peer nominated for values and achievement in five years.
What I Learned
- Shape your own career -- you don't know what's possible until you try it or ask. The people who progress fastest aren't the most talented; they're the ones who back themselves to ask.
- Pairing consulting skills with a hard technical specialisation the firm was betting on built a different career proposition than either alone.
- Being the national SME on an emerging technology means mostly managing expectations in a space where certainty doesn't really exist yet.
- The best leaders give people enough rope to flourish without hanging themselves. Watching that up close -- and watching how they build genuine client relationships rather than perform them -- shapes how you think about leadership in ways that are hard to learn any other way.
- Confidence in a room at any seniority level is mostly just reps. Public sector, private sector, analyst, board -- the underlying skill is the same.
I joined Deloitte in Auckland in 2015 off the back of my C5 Network experience -- bright-eyed, barely knowing what consulting meant, wanting to be deeper in the business world than software engineering alone would put me.
Starting in Auckland turned out to be an advantage. Small enough market that you don't get siloed into one industry early -- you just work on whatever's needed. I did digital strategy, a secondment into a finance and accounts team, large scale tech implementation, human capital transformation. I tried everything, and nobody stopped me asking.
By 2017 I'd been nominated as the national SME for blockchain and AI in New Zealand -- one of the few people credibly positioned to explain technologies most executives had heard about but nobody fully understood yet. I got flown around to talk to boards across the country. Honest version: you spend a lot of time managing expectations in a space where certainty doesn't really exist. At the same time, being one of the first five people in NZ certified in a tech platform Deloitte was betting big on -- and combining that with consulting ability -- let me land and expand in some of the firm's priority clients. I was promoted to Manager at record pace and won a peer nominated award for values and achievement from the people who'd watched me work.
I also had the privilege of working alongside some exceptional leaders -- the kind who give people enough rope to flourish without hanging themselves, and who show you what genuine client relationships and selling actually look like up close. Watching people build serious careers from the inside, early, shapes how you think about leadership in ways that no course really replicates.
The main thing I took from Deloitte: you have to shape your own career. Nobody hands you the interesting work -- you have to ask for it, or just start doing it. The environment gave me that freedom, and I came out the other side confident working with anyone at any seniority -- public sector or private, analyst or board. Turns out that confidence is mostly just reps.
Newsletter
Occasional thoughts, delivered.
Less than weekly. No noise — just the things I think are worth sharing.