Written by Anna Jia
About the Author
Current Position: Financial Advisory Rotational Analyst @ Deloitte (Toronto)
Education:
Bachelor of Accounting and Financial Management, 2019
Masters of Accounting, 2020
ACE Consulting Group Involvement:
Analyst (2015-2016)
Associate (2016-2017)
President (2017-2018)
What were the top three highlights of your student life at the University of Waterloo?
There are so many good memories! A few personal favorites of mine:
The whole ACE team travelling to Toronto together where we hosted two separate client meetings. One project related to strategizing the program arc for a non-for-profit based in Colombia; the other, a pricing strategy for a Toronto-based health tech start-up.
Pulling all-nighter with my best friends to complete the final project for AFM 341 – Accounting Information Systems.
Hosting my last in-person peer support meeting with my SAF first year mentees the day the school announced closure in March of 2020.
How has being a part of ACE impacted your professional life and/or career trajectory?
Two areas that made the most impact in my professional life:
The people I met from ACE are some of the most driven, inspiring folks – the way they think and present themselves are a few things I try to learn and absorb.
The entrepreneurial mindset has a huge impact on my own thinking. Asking the questions of: why are we doing something this way, is there a better way to do this, is there anything new that could be integrated and implemented, are a few examples of questions I ask myself all the time now in my professional role.
Can you tell us a little bit about your involvement with Deloitte’s Quick Start program? Can you describe the program and your experience in it?
Quick Start program is a 2-year rotational program, where each analyst works in a variety of business groups within Financial Advisory. A few that I’ve been part of include: Forensics, Valuation and Modelling, M&A Advisory. The nice thing about being part of Quick Start is that we are a class of analysts, with dedicated program managers and leaders that support the growth of each individual. It has been great for personal growth, as I have the opportunity to work on projects and work in business lines that are aligned with my own goals. One example is that I’ve had the opportunity to see the M&A lifecycle from start to finish! This includes both the pre-deal due diligence work, the financial modelling work as part of the transaction, and the integrity due diligence and post deal integration. It’s nice to see how a deal works from a holistic view.
We saw that you developed a proposal to improve food security in Indigenous communities, and that this idea is going to be furthered through Thought For Food’s Food Systems Game Changers Lab. Can you tell us about the organization? What inspired you to get involved, and what kind of work will you be doing in the coming months?
I’ve always been fascinated by the work IDEO does. For those that are not as familiar, they are a design consultancy firm, that focuses on human-centered systems design. They have an open challenge website where they post big problems, and accept any submission, proposal from people anywhere. And a recent open challenge was how to shape the food system for 2030.
How I got involved with the Indigenous food systems specifically stemmed from the news on residential schools. I’ve been quite ignorant of the issue previously and started doing my own research on the Indigenous history here in Canada. During my research, I noticed that food and nutrition security is still a big issue within these communities – research shows over 40% of them do not have secure access to food. After quite a bit of research and readings into disparity between Indigenous foods and modern food, I drafted a proposal that outlined the idea of bringing vertical farming to Indigenous people, and building a sense of community along with the technology.
The program is 12 weeks and right now a few of the folks and I, who are all tackling a similar issue meet together twice a week to build a joint solution. We will be participating in matchmaking events with different stakeholders, such as corporations, governments, NPOs to realize our solution. It’s very exciting and I’m learning a lot from my teammates!