They say an act of kindness is never wasted.
Long before Lori-Ann Beausoleil was born, her paternal grandfather, Dowling Streete, died in an industrial accident while working in the gritty steel mills in Sydney, N.S. – far from his hometown in Barbados. Beausoleil describes the accident as “horrendous,” and regrets her grandmother never received the compensation she was due. But in the aftermath, a wonderful thing happened: the neighborhood rallied around. Members of the black community, a Jewish family and the Ukrainian community all supported her grandmother financially, making sure that Dowling and Doris’s son Laurence would attend St. Francis Xavier University, 200 km south in Antigonish.
Laurence became the first African-Canadian to play football for St. FX, and graduated to a long career teaching high-school Latin, history and phys ed in Mississauga, Ont. Growing up, Beausoleil remembers her father stressing goodwill and pride at the family dinner table. If his four children had any complaints or questions about racism, “he would never allow us to focus on it,” says Beausoleil. “He used to say, ‘That’s negative energy. Just move on, with your head high.’”
Now 53 and a partner at PwC, Beausoleil credits her father’s philosophy with helping her carve out a singular career in “Big Four” accounting. After her early years on the audit side, she focused on consulting, becoming PwC’s national practice leader in real estate, overseeing audit, tax and consulting services. She later shed her responsibilities on the accounting side, staying on as the real-estate consulting and deals leader. But now she also leads another team: PWC’s growing forensic-services practice, which makes her the go-to partner for issues involving data security, anti-bribery and corruption (ABC) consulting, cyber crime, and fraud and corruption vulnerability assessments.
As if that weren’t enough, in 2013 Beausoleil was named to lead PwC’s Office of Diversity and Inclusion, where she strived to embed the diversity values in the firm’s people strategies and its business dealings. Beausoleil admits you don’t see many women of colour as partners in national accounting firms. But she thinks that will change. “You can’t work with clients without having people that look like them and understand their cultures.”
You can’t work with clients without having people that
look like them and understand their cultures
Promoting diversity push also gives Beausoleil a chance to embed her upbeat business philosophies in the firm’s next generation of partners. “People often ask me, ‘how did you make it?’” she says. “I believed in myself. My father always told me I could be anybody I wanted to be. I never thought I wasn’t good enough.
“Maybe it’s the mindset I carried, the way I have handled myself, but I never saw outward signs of discrimination [in business]. The differentiation of being a woman of color is not been a part of the conversation. Although my being a bull in a china shop might be part of it.”
Beausoleil doesn’t hesitate to speak up when she sees opportunities to improve the business – but she also works hard to make a case for change. “You always have to be rallying support from the senior leadership,” she says. “You have to make sure they understand the short- and long-term implications of your vision.” For instance, she put together a business plan to show how she intended to grow the forensics practice to a position commensurate with the threats it faces: everything from internal fraud and data theft to bribery in international trade and money laundering. And when she saw individual hiring wasn’t closing the gap, she pushed for PwC to make an acquisition. “I put a business case together. We went out, did our due diligence and bought a company [Ottawa-based Platinum Legal Group]. It was the foundation of our eDiscovery practice.”
Beausoleil says she was “thrilled” with the support PwC’s executive gave her in approving the acquisition of Platinum Legal. “Now I have to make sure we get the return on that investment.”
What accounting was to the 20th century – recording, measuring, and identifying patterns – forensics may be to the 21st. Forensic specialists use scientific analysis and high-tech tools to investigate situations and crimes, made so much more complex by the rise of the Internet, hackers, cyber criminals and data theft. “Everything now has an element of forensics,” says Beausoleil.
According to PwC’s 2016 survey on “economic crime,” 37% of Canadian organizations had experienced some form of internal theft, cyber crime, procurement fraud or human-resources fraud in the past two years. “The number of investigation is on the rise,” Beausoleil says. “If we don’t have a strong forensics practice, we won’t be a successful firm for long.”
She notes that building the forensics practice also involves diversity issues. “Traditionally, 95% of our team would be accountants. But now we have lawyers, former RCMP officers and data scientists. We have a totally diversified talent pool. And that’s been fun for me. Everybody’s here, getting to work with each other and trust one another.
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“I’ve always believed my success has come from leading diverse teams, which give you the diversity of thought you need.”
True diversity doesn’t happen by accident. Beausoleil credits a mentor in her early years at the firm for encouraging her – and helping her understand the culture of professional partnerships. “Someone coming in like me from a non-business background doesn’t always understand these things.”
Today she encourages young professionals to share her ambitions for getting ahead. “So many people think they can’t do it,” she says. “That’s one of the challenges in today’s workplace. You can’t push them. You have to put on your listening ears. Support them, mentor them, help them along the way.”
She adds that another mentor helped her grow from auditor to advisor. “The advisory side is very different,” she says. “You have to hunt and kill every engagement you have. You have to bring creativity to every relationship. But I love talking, I love people. So the sales part came naturally to me.”
Now, as a national leader, Beausoleil works from a set of principles she learned from her parents. “Lead by example. Don’t ask people to do anything you wouldn’t do yourself. To build a team, you must appreciate the diversity of the team – and promote and develop people accordingly.”
How do you manage a multidisciplinary, professional team that’s scattered across the country? “Communicate, communicate, communicate,” says Beausoleil. “It’s not easy to keep a team focused.”
When speaking to business women about how to break through the glass ceiling, Beausoleil says communication is key, ere, too. “You’ve been given a voice, so use it. Speak up. Make people know who you are, how good you are, and that you’re a part of that team.”
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