PwC Vets Finalists for Top Job as Industry Meets AI, Gen Z Era

PwC’s next leader will confront the challenges of rapidly advancing technology, recruiting and training an evolving workforce, and keeping up with the needs of its core accounting clients.

Those challenges align with the varied backgrounds of each of the three candidates vying for the top job, succeeding Tim Ryan as the senior partner to lead the Big Four firm’s US operation.

Jenny Koehler offers partners—who’ll pick the next senior partner—the option of a technology and business leader as the Big Four firms each jockey for a slice of the booming artificial intelligence market.

Or they could pick Paul Griggs, an auditor who has focused on the careers and development of PwC’s workforce in recent years, as the industry grapples with a shortage of accountants and faces training their professionals to use AI and to understand climate risks.

The third contender, Kathryn Kaminsky, is a bank audit partner who previously ran the firm’s tax practice before it merged with assurance during a 2021 restructuring. She reflects the firm’s core tax and audit arms that generate steady revenues.

Whoever ends up with the prize will have to address each of those challenges and new hurdles that emerge. But how partners vote could determine where the firm focuses its energy and invests its $23 billion in revenue over the next four years.

“Accounting firms these days are going through such a major transition,” said Lee Frederiksen, founder and managing partner emeritus of Hinge, a brand and marketing firm for the professional services industry. “The challenge is now they’ve got so many problems that it’s very hard to find one person who can solve all of the problems.”

All three contenders currently serve on Tim Ryan’s leadership team, each with more than two decades at the firm.

Griggs is the firm’s US markets vice chair and the former lead audit partner for Goldman Sachs Group Inc. Kaminsky is trust solutions vice chair and the former lead audit partner for JP Morgan Chase & Co. Koehler, who is the firm’s strategic growth and business development leader, previously focused on cloud and digital technologies.

PwC declined to comment Wednesday.

Generational Shift

The incoming generation of workers expects to see a diverse slate of top leaders. They want to refuse to work for certain companies on ethical grounds. They look for mentors to help them quickly scale the corporate ladder, said Alison Taylor, associate professor at NYU Stern School of Business.

“Senior leadership is not prepared to put in place the kind of leader that will keep these young people happy,” Taylor said. “Senior leaders want to cash out and don’t want to make the difficult decisions. But there is more and more and more pressure coming from young graduates to do that.”

Dialing back diversity and inclusion efforts or climate commitments could put “leaders on a collision course with their younger workers,” she said.

Those workforce dynamics aren’t unique to PwC or the Big Four firms.

But recruiting and retaining top professionals has been a nagging challenge for the firms predating the pandemic and the Great Resignation that followed. Accounting as an industry has struggled to attract new recruits amid demand for technology and science jobs coupled with lagging wages and tough licensing requirements.

Inflation and the economic toll from rising interest rates has curbed demand for consulting services resulting in a series of layoffs last year across the firms. PwC has so far avoided job cuts in the US.

Profit-minded partners, who typically own a stake in the firm, have a hard time thinking about what risks and challenges could be lurking around the corner, Frederiksen said.

Ryan led PwC’s reorganization, more than a year before Ernst & Young announced its failed attempt at a business split, intended to expand the firm’s compliance work. The move also put more distance between the firm’s regulated audit work, which faces strict conflict of interest rules, and its tax strategy business.

Under Ryan, the firm also published its first diversity and inclusion report and committed to a dozen reforms meant to bolster confidence in the firm’s auditing.

Griggs, Kaminsky, and Koehler have been meeting with partners looking to garner support. Voting could start in the coming weeks but PwC has not specified a timeline.

Ryan’s second, four-year term ends in June.